Dance with the Devil
by lionesseyes13
Summary: Mike Ramsey's adventure in Europe is a saga filled with friends, fears, and fights. A humorous story rated T for hockey player language.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **As much care as possible has been made to make this story historically and culturally accurate. For instance, all the Swedish foods mentioned are common breakfast foods according to my research, and the Swedish proverb is a well-known one, although it has been translated into English. From the hockey standpoint, Don Edwards really was the goaltender for the Buffalo Sabres who had drafted Mike Ramsey eleventh overall in the 1979 NHL Entry Draft, making him the first American to be drafted for the NHL in the first round. On that note, Mike Ramsey had one of the most decorated NHL careers of the Miracle team, being an NHL All-Star four times and captain for the Sabres during his fourteen seasons with that club. The hockey culture of enforcers and skill players is also as portrayed as realistically as I could.

While I've done my best with research, I've also tried to be creative, so that's where the fiction part comes in. If readers have any questions about the historical accuracy of anything in the story, they should feel free to PM me or submit a review, and I'll get back to them with an answer as soon as possible, which may take a little longer than I like since I'll be undergoing oral surgery to have my wisdom teeth removed. Without any further ado, on with the story:

"_He who takes the Devil aboard must row him ashore."—__**Swedish Proverb**_

The Devil Aboard

The crowd—or maybe it was just his hammering pulse—roared in Mike Ramsey's ears. This was the big league, where every check and pass mattered. Every mistake he made might be why he and his teammates didn't get their names engraved on the Stanley Cup, the trophy that everyone claimed was the most difficult in all of sports to earn, and the one that had dominated all their dreams since they had learned to skate, serving as their own commentators as they pretended to score the game winner in game seven of the Stanley Cup finals in front of a packed, adoring home stadium.

That was pressure that made his ankles tremble with an excess of adrenaline, but it was mostly a pleasurable one that made him perform at his peak. It meant that he didn't hesitate or cringe when a forward in an opposing jersey tried to run over his goalie, Don Edwards. Mike was called Rammer for a reason, and the meat-brained forward who got too rough with his goaltender was about to receive a swift, painful education. With a fierce crosscheck that lived up to his nickname, he cleared the crease, and when the idiot forward retaliated with a punch, he began throwing his own.

A shrill noise pierced through the scarlet veil of his wrath, freezing his fist in the middle of a vicious attack. He expected the sound to have originated from a killjoy referee about to drag him away from the fray to the penalty box to serve a five minute roughing major (and, if there was any justice in the universe, the goon he had just been using as a punching bag would receive a roughing major and a goalie interference call). Instead, it was his diabolical alarm in its latest nefarious scheme to ruin his life slicing through his dream of playing in the NHL as an ill-timed something always did and yanking him awake for what would doubtlessly be an extremely taxing day.

Mumbling incoherently about how the person who invented alarm clocks should be launched into space without food or water to investigate black holes, Mike fumbled around on the nightstand until his fingers hit the button that silenced the wretched alarm clock.

"Has the nuclear holocaust just begun?" inquired a bleary voice from the den of blankets on the opposite bed, as Jack O'Callahan, Mike's roommate in Stockholm, lifted a head with hair spiky from sleep off a pillow.

"Nope." Shaking his head, Mike rolled out of bed into his slippers and stumbled into the bathroom to brush his teeth and comb his hair. "That was just the damn alarm clock with its usual rude awakening."

"Fuck." Jack scowled as he pushed himself out from under his covers and crossed over to the dresser, where he rummaged through the top drawer in search of comfortable travel clothes. "I was hoping it was the nuclear holocaust, so I wouldn't have to get up."

"Tell me about it." Mike spread a line of Colgate along his toothbrush. "I was having a really amazing dream where I was in the NHL playing for the Sabres, and I got in the most exciting scrape with an opposing forward who didn't respect the boundary of the crease around Don Edwards. What do you think that means?"

"Why do you always ask dumbass questions first thing in the morning?" Jack's head disappeared in the sweatshirt he was putting on, and then emerged a second later as the clothing settled over his chest. "Do I look like a psychologist about to ramble on about the Freudian meanings of dreams, or some fraud of a psychic attempting to predict the future based on dreams and tea leaves?"

"Why do you always wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" retorted Mike, as he brushed his teeth with vigor, trying to freshen himself for a day spent in the misery of an airplane—his least favorite vehicle. "I was just wondering what you thought my dream meant. You don't have to act like you've got a stick shoved up your ass all the time."

"I'll humor you. Your dream means that you, my belligerent buddy, are trying to rival my lifetime stitches count." Jack pulled on a pair of jeans. "What else could it mean?"

"Don't know." Mike's words were muffled by the toothbrush he was running over his teeth. "I hoped it might mean that I was going to be an NHL All-Star one day."

"Come on, Rammer. Don't be a moron." With a snort, Jack rolled his eyes. "You're going to be an NHL All-Star one day because you're a kickass defenseman, not because you had some weird dream about throwing punches in the big league on a night you had too much milk."

"You'll be an All-Star, too, of course." Grinning, Mike spat out his toothpaste into the basin, rinsed out his mouth by swishing cool water around in it, and then cleaned out the sink, watching the water flow down the drain. "We'll travel all over the country and have many grand adventures in all sorts of arenas. It'll be the height of fun."

"The Rammer I thought I knew hated traveling the way the Hatfields despised the McCoys." Jack glowered at his reflection in the dresser mirror as he attempted to brush his hair into some semblance of order. "Did you get a lobotomy performed on you last night and forget to mention it to me?"

"Nah." Mike stroked his comb through his dark hair. "I don't mind traveling in general. It's flying I hate. Flying makes my ears pop and my stomach clench with nerves, because, as far as I'm concerned, the only things that should fly are those like birds and bats that God obviously intended to fly."

"How do you know God didn't intend for humans to fly?" Jack arched an eyebrow. "He might have inspired the Wright brothers to figure out this aviation crap so that rich people could have their weekends in Paris and GI Joes could drop atomic bombs over Japan."

"If God wanted us to fly, He would have told us to invent the airplane in those commandments He made Moses lug down from Mount Sinai." Deciding that his hair was at least neater than the crow's nest it had been upon his awakening, he stopped combing it and carried his comb, toothbrush, and toothpaste over to the duffel bag he had packed for today's flight out of Stockholm into Oslo.

As he tucked his toiletries into his baggage and tried not to contemplate how soon his intestines would be knotting as his plane took off and his ears popping like corn in a kettle as the pressure built inside his brain, he went on, "Better yet, He would have given us wings so we wouldn't have to rely on metal contraptions that seem distinctly not aerodynamic."

"You're so clueless about physics," scoffed Jack, while throwing what appeared to be an entire drawer of clothing into his otherwise empty duffel bag in a noticeably haphazard fashion. "No wonder you're so terrified of flying, since you've got no idea how airplanes work. Maybe you wouldn't be such a baby if you bothered to get an education beyond the end of your hockey stick."

"Shut up," snapped Mike, who, as the youngest member of the team, perceived any cracks about his relative youth as the ultimate affront. "At least I'm mature enough to pack my bag before takeoff. Pity the same can't be said about you."

"My bag will be packed before takeoff." Jack dumped another drawer's worth of outfits into his luggage. "Stop worrying before you give yourself a fucking ulcer."

"It won't be packed neatly." Primly, Mike checked that the golden ribbon his girlfriend Jill had given him to remember her by before he left on the team's European tour and that he had tied to his duffel bag as a rapid means of identification when it was rotating round the carousel at an airport's baggage claim was affixed tightly to his luggage.

"Are you channeling Mac?" In the midst of tossing a bathrobe and towel into his duffel, Jack shot Mike a withering glance. "Only Mac would give a flying fuck whether somebody else's bag is packed in an orderly fashion."

"Nope," countered Mike, as he pulled on the jeans and T-shirt he had left folded at the foot of his bed, setting it aside for wearing during his upcoming travel ordeal. "If I were Mac, I'd be at severe risk of hernia, because, once again, you're forgetting to put any form of identification on your luggage."

"What did I do to deserve having a complete idiot for a roommate? Did I drown a puppy while sleep-walking or something?" Gazing up at the ceiling he plainly intended to serve as heaven, Jack spread his palms hopelessly. "Haven't I explained to you a dozen times, Rammer, that when I'm traveling with a bunch of people who all have their luggage marked, I don't need to waste time worrying about tying ribbons or taping initials to my bag, since it will be among the baggage of those with whom I'm traveling. Now, why don't you do your stupid self a favor and quit while you're ahead, since if you were any slower, you'd be moving backward?"

"I'm going to move down to breakfast." Finished dressing, Mike strode over to the door. As he opened it and stepped out onto the plush carpeting of the hallway, he tossed over his shoulder, "You're the one who's going to be moving slowly today if you don't eat breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Do you want me to bring you up a slice of that knackebrod with messmor?"

In the world of Swedish breakfast cuisine, knackebrod was a crisp bread and messmor a sweet spread made from butter and whey. It was portable and tasted more palatable than it sounded, which meant that it was ideal for a breakfast on the run.

"You're just trying to break my remaining teeth." Jack smirked. "Be gone and don't threaten my dental health further."

Determining that he would give Jack a slice of knackebrod and messmor anyway since otherwise Jack would be griping all the way through customs about how hungry he was now that his stomach had awakened, Mike closed the door and continued down the corridor to the elevator bank, where he pressed the down arrow.

A second later, the steel doors parted with a heraldic ding, and he boarded an elevator that was already transporting Mark Johnson and Rob McClanahan down to the lobby for breakfast.

"Good morning," Mark said, as the doors slammed shut behind Mike, and the elevator lurched downward.

"Morning," added Rob in a tone that stated he was awake but he did not plan on saying anything remotely upbeat until noon, so he saw it as too ambitious to ask others to have a positive morning experience.

"Top of the morning." Mike assumed his cheeriest voice to discover how quickly he could vex Rob. "What a funny expression, that is. I mean, when it's six in the morning like this, wouldn't it be more accurate to greet someone by calling it the bottom of the morning? Shouldn't top of the morning just be reserved for any time after eleven and before noon?"

"Top, in this case, means best," explained Mark, shrugging. "You're just wishing somebody the best morning possible. Nothing weird about that."

"Of course, when you're flying, it's possible to take a more literal interpretation of the phrase." Rob's eyes gleamed in a manner that announced louder than a shout that he was about to take revenge on Mike for being too jovial before noon. "You really are on top of almost everything in an airplane. There's that jolt as the plane leaves the runway. Then you're above cities and towns. Skyscrapers look like needles and houses like thimbles. Cars are like beetles and highways like worms. After that, you're in the clouds—"

"If you don't shut your trap, I'd be happy to send you into the clouds." Mike's hands clenched into fists as he waged a losing battle to keep his vertigo at bay, because the plunging elevator reminded him too much of a sinking airplane.

Ignoring Mike's menacing declaration, Rob went on as if nobody else had spoken, "Of course, at first, you don't really know that you're among the clouds, and you wonder what all the grey around you is. After a bit, it dawns on you that the grayness is clouds, and you're flying through the top of your world—the sky you normally crane your neck to look at and that you always think of as untouchable. You just have to wonder if the people staring up at the clouds think you're a tail on a fluffy bunny or something even if the idea makes you dizzy."

"Keep running your mouth and you won't need an idea to make you dizzy." Mike lifted a fist in a final warning. "You won't need a passport or a ticket to fly, either."

Rob opened his mouth—probably to offer another one of his patented piquant remarks, since he was the contentious type who would regard it as a monumental achievement to goad someone into giving him a black eye before morning coffee—but he was mercifully cut off before he could begin by an elbow in the ribs from Mark, who said firmly, "Don't be an idiot, and lay off Rammer, Robbie. You'll make him sick before we even reach the airport."

"I will not." Rob shifted his focus to arguing with Mark, as the elevator arrived in the lobby with a jolt, and they turned right into a dining room where a continental buffet breakfast was served every morning. "You're the one being an idiot, Magic, if you think a person can honestly get nauseous from merely talking about flying, because that's as illogical as believing someone can get seasick just by glancing at a photo of the ocean."

"Stomachs aren't ruled by logic," countered Mark, as they grabbed dishes and started making their way along the buffet table, helping themselves to portions of whatever food they deemed sufficiently appetizing. "Look at him. He's already got a slightly green tinge."

"I don't have a green tinge," Mike hissed, his temper flaring like oil hurled atop a blazing flame, while he piled at least a dozen slices of knackebrod and messmor on his plate. "I'm right here, too, so you both can stop talking about me as if I'm not."

"Wow, Rammer." Rob whistled, as he fixed a pointed stare on Mike's overflowing saucer. "Do you mind leaving some crumbs for the rest of the hotel guests to enjoy, or would you prefer to be a fat pig?"

"Didn't your mom ever explain to you that it's rude to make snide remarks about other people's meals?" Mike scowled, since his mother certainly had taught him that, as well as not to gawk at those whose moles were larger than their noses and not to taunt unfortunate beings who appeared to weigh as much as an adult killer whale. "Was that one of the finer points of etiquette that she didn't get a chance to cover, because she was too busy teaching you that the salad fork is laid horizontally above the dinner plate at a banquet?"

"Good thing she didn't teach me that, since that would be totally wrong. It's the dessert fork that's laid horizontally over the dinner plate, you uncultured buffoon." Rob rolled his eyes as he poured fermented milk called filmjolk over a bowl of muesli, an oat cereal akin to granola. "Anyway, Mom told me not to comment on people's weight or eating habits in polite society, but she also said that everybody in polite society would sooner suffer a famine than commit the faux pas of overfilling a plate like a glutton. I guess that excludes you from polite society, so I'm at liberty to mock your excessive eating as much as I like."

"Your tongue is as poisonous as a cobra's." Mike wrinkled his nose at Rob. "I hope you die from your own venom, but if that fails, I'll be glad to slip some arsenic into your coffee."

"Death threats are the last resort of those with no imagination." Rob snorted. "Of course, if you had an imagination you'd be able to invent an acceptable excuse for that mountain on your plate."

"I don't need an excuse," riposted Mike. "Half the food on my plate is for OC, since he isn't coming down for breakfast."

"Thank God for small miracles." Rob smirked. "I don't have to see OC until later, and your breakfast might fit in the barf bags the stewardess hands out when you vomit on the plane. This morning might turn out to be good, after all. Stranger things have happened."

"I swear that you can't go five seconds without making a moronic and mean comment." To spite Rob, Mike dumped a mound of porridge on his crowded platter and sprinkled a dusting of cinnamon and sugar over it. "Every time Herb threatened to tie your tongue into a knot, he was completely justified, in my opinion."

"Clichés like that are the pathetic indications of a coach with no vocabulary," stated Rob, all tartness, as Mike poured a mug of steaming coffee, adding a river of cream and a rock of sugar to ensure the bitter beverage did not render his stomach any more queasy than it already was at the prospect of flight. "I'm _so_ not impressed or intimidated by Herb's lack of intelligence or originality."

"Well," Mark put in, spooning porridge onto his saucer and plopping a dollop of raspberry jam on top like whipped cream on a hot fudge sundae, "I have a vocabulary, and I've often longed to tie your tongue into a knot. If you wish, I can be very creative and describe the knot in eloquent detail."

"Like all geniuses, it's my tragic fate to be reviled and misunderstood." Rob poured himself a cup of coffee, which he did not dilute with cream or sugar.

"How melodramatic." Mark poured a glass of juice. "I had hoped we could make it through breakfast without one of your trademark 'woe is me' speeches, but I suppose that just wasn't in the cards today."

"Ah, it is the rare soothsayer who can make predictions about the past." Rob snickered as they carried their dishes over to a circular table already occupied by Bill Baker and Phil Verchota, best friends who were following their policy of doing everything possible together. "The team can only hope that one day you'll be as good a hockey player as you are a fortune-teller, Mark."

"Speaking of fortune-telling," Phil contributed as Mike, Rob, and Mark slid into seats, "I haven't read my horoscope since we left America. Maybe I should get a newspaper so I can study my horoscope for a good laugh on the trip to Norway."

"I thought I saw some newspapers stacked on the concierge's desk as we passed through the lobby." Mark mixed the jam into his porridge. "You could get one there."

"I don't know if those are free, though." Phil munched on his open-faced hard boiled egg and cheese sandwich on knackebrod. "I'm a dirt-poor, penny-pinching college grad. I can't go squandering my limited funds on newspapers that will be outdated tomorrow."

"You could always ask the concierge whether the newspapers are free or not." Mike gnawed on a slice of knackebrod and messmor before washing it down with a gulp of coffee that, despite the gallons of cream and pounds of sugar he had added, still made him grimace at its bitter flavor. "When we checked in, he said he was always here to help, after all. At least, I think that's what he told us. He had a bit of a strong accent when he tried to communicate in English, so he might actually have been explaining that the men's restroom is located on the left side of the lobby."

"Let me know when that caffeine awakens your brain." Phil rolled his eyes. "How socially inept are you, Rammer, if you believe I can ask whether newspapers are free without sounding like an utter mooch?"

"You should ask if the newspapers are _complimentary_." Rob paused in his consumption of his filmjolk and muesli long enough to put what he judged to be an appropriate emphasis on this term. "Asking if something is complimentary instead of free entails using a bigger word, and, thus, allows you to preserve a modicum of dignity in the midst of your shameless begging. Complimentary is a respectable word. That's why classy resorts have complimentary buffets while cheap motels have free donuts."

"Thanks for the _complimentary _English lesson, Mac," Phil answered with all the innocence of a spring daffodil. "Perhaps you could translate the Swedish articles into English for me, as well. I mean, that's the only way I could stand a chance of understanding or enjoying the newspaper."

"Not true." Rob sipped his coffee. "You would have plenty of fun scrawling profanities in the crossword puzzle and looking at the pictures like you usually do when you get your fingers on a newspaper. It shouldn't matter whether the news is in English or Swedish, seeing as you don't bother to read it, anyhow."

Before Phil could debate the point, Coach Patrick, bearing a folder and a harried expression, sidled up to their table and greeted them in a rush, "Morning, boys. How are we today?"

Without waiting for a reply, he plunged on, rummaging through his folder, "I have everyone's tickets and boarding passes here. This is for you, Rob, and here you go, Mark." He thrust the documents into the outstretched hands of the addressed and then gave Bill and Phil their paperwork. "Here you are, Bill, and this is for you, Phil. You'll be next to each other on the plane. Mike, here's yours, and have you seen Jack this morning?"

As he accepted the proffered paperwork, Mike, not wanting to throw a teammate under an onrushing bus this early, responded with a vaguely saucy air, "Yep. You'll be pleased to hear that he's still alive and not kidnapped."

"Excellent." Coach Patrick assumed the exaggeratedly patient manner he adopted whenever he suspected that a player was being deliberately obtuse or obstinate. "Where exactly is he, Rammer?"

"Upstairs in our room, Coach. He has a few more belongings to pack, so he isn't planning on coming to breakfast." Mike shrugged to show how miniscule the amount of packing Jack had remaining to do was and prayed that Coach Patrick would be convinced by that gesture enough to not pose further questions. "I'm going to bring some knackebrod and messmor up to him, though. Don't worry about him boarding a plane hungry with me around to take care of him."

"Very well." Obviously only listening with half an ear to Mike's answer, Coach Patrick nodded and offered another ticket and boarding pass to Mike, who took the documents. "Here's Jack's stuff. Look out for it as well as your own."

Affixing a serious glance on the table at large, Coach Patrick continued, "I expect all of you to be careful with everything I just gave you. I don't want to hear about any dropped boarding passes or lost tickets. Let's make the journey to Norway as smooth sailing as possible, gentlemen."

"You don't have to be so damn condescending," grumbled Rob, stabbing his muesli with his spoon and spraying filmjolk all over the burgundy tablecloth, but, fortuitously, Coach Patrick, who was hastening off to deal with the next crisis surrounding their departure, didn't hear this gripe. Swiping at the fermented milk with a napkin, Rob mumbled, "We aren't exceptionally irresponsible Pee Wees who have never traveled abroad. We aren't going to lose our tickets or our boarding passes. Coach Patrick is just being a nag, which is par for the course with him. He nags, and Herb bugs. They're a fucking matching set."

"I wonder what would happen if I did lose my ticket and boarding pass." Descending into a daydream about not having to survive the torture of a flight to Norway, Mike's face split into a wistful grin.

"Don't say things like that, Rammer." Bill's eyes widened in reproach over his ham, tomato, and cucumber on knackebrod, and Mike's cheeks burned with twin fires of guilt and embarrassment. If there was anyone (including aliens) that he didn't want to be chided by, it was Bill, since Bill was his hero. When Bill, being a brilliant defenseman, had carried Grand Rapids High School to victory at the state championships, Mike had begun to idolize him. Once he had started playing hockey at the U, he had been simultaneously giddy with eagerness to meet his hero and numb with terror that he might uncover that his idol was no larger than life, after al. However, Bill had proved to be the rarest of role models: one who became only increasingly admirable as you discovered more about him. No amount of hanging around his dorm room until Phil kicked you out could reveal a flaw. He was calm and patient even when Mike followed him around like a particularly exuberant golden retriever. On ice, he was a defensive rock who could be an offensive catalyst from the blueline, but he was never smug, and he always had time to teach Mike a new maneuver. Whenever Mike had a problem on or off the ice, he could turn to Bill for guidance and support, because Bill was never derisive or dismissive about anything. "We don't want you lost in the airport forever."

"I'd rather be lost in the airport forever than have to fly." Mike realized he probably sounded like a sulky brat, but he couldn't stop himself from offering this commentary even if it was borderline whiny. "I hate flying, every single ear-popping and stomach-twisting moment of it."

"When will you outgrow your wimpiness, Rammer?" Phil emitted an impatient tut. "Cars are much more likely to crash than airplanes, and I don't see you having a nervous breakdown whenever you have to go for a drive."

"That's because not all car crashes are major." Mike chomped on his lower lip instead of his knackebrod and messmor, since his appetite had faded from all this discussion of flying. "All airplane crashes are catastrophic and probably fatal."

"He has a fair point, you know, Phil." Putting on his most judicious face, Rob inserted himself into the conversation again. "In plane crashes, the stewardesses tell the passengers to duck not to protect them but to preserve their teeth so the mangled remains can be identified via dental records. Nobody wants to admit it, but, in a plane crash, there's very little you can do to keep yourself safe and alive."

"I'm sure you intended all this talk of plane crashes and deaths to be reassuring, but it's actually not helping at all." Bill shot Rob a repressive glance. "Now would be an impeccable time for you to be quiet, Robbie."

"Sorry for making your flying phobia worse, Rammer." Rob flashed an apologetic smile. "I'll slip you a piece of gum before takeoff to make up for it, okay? Gum always keeps my ear popping to a minimum."

"Fine." Not troubling to point out that gum might reduce ear popping but could not stifle instinctive fear, Mike snatched up as many slices of knackebrod and messmor as he could handle, rose from his chair, and headed toward the lobby, tossing over his shoulder, "See you guys around. I'm going to bring OC up his breakfast, since I always was curious about what it's like to be room service."

Three minutes later, as he unlocked his hotel room door, he was provided with a very real education in how room service was treated like dog excrement attached to a tennis shoe when Jack responded to his announcement about carrying up breakfast with a snarled, "Put it on the desk, and then do something useful for a change by helping me close this shitty bag."

"Chill out." As ordered, Mike placed the hard bread and sweet spread on the desk and then bent over to assist Jack, who was panting as if he had just run a marathon through the Andes, in zipping a duffel that optimistically could be regarded as having reached its carrying capacity and pessimistically could be defined as overpopulated with luggage. Yanking on the zipper with all the energy he could muster, Mike grunted, "Next time, you should fold your clothing to conserve space, damn it."

"You can use your ass as a filing cabinet for your smart comments," growled Jack, as the zipper shut, and the resultant velocity slammed them into one another. "I asked for you to help, not criticize like some neighborhood harpy."

"Don't call me a harpy." Shooting Jack a scorching glare, Mike collected his belongings, hurrying to get out of the room so he could ride the elevator down to the lobby to wait in peace from Jack's gibes until the bus was ready for loading. Unfortunately, he was in such a rush that the strap of his skate bag slid off his shoulder while he attempted to make his escape.

As Mike, his cheeks burning hot enough to roast marshmallows to a brown crisp, scooped up his skate bag, Jack hooted, "Don't need those. You can't skate anyway, neighborhood harpy."

"If I'm a harpy, beware my claws," Mike volleyed back, and, before Jack could fire another quip, he stomped out of the room into the hallway, feeling exhausted even though they hadn't even reached the airport yet.


	2. Chapter 2

"_If there is room in the heart, there is room for the ass."—__**Swedish proverb intended to welcome guests into a home.**_

Room for the Ass

"I can't wait for takeoff," chirped Neal Broten, who might have been one of the worst people on the entire planet to wait beside on a ludicrously long security line at an airport, and Mike could only be glad that takeoff still wasn't imminent since they hadn't even reached their gate yet. Par for the course, Neal was leaping five steps ahead of himself, and Mike couldn't exactly blame his teammate for getting a tad impatient with the slow march of the proceedings. After taking a half hour to drive through Stockholm's traffic to the airport and another half hour to drop off the luggage they weren't carrying onto the plane, the team had been standing on a monstrous security queue for nearly an hour and fifteen minutes. "Flying is so exciting, isn't it, Rammer? You can pretend to be a bird soaring over everything and sailing through the fluffy cotton clouds."

Scowling, Mike observed inwardly that everything was just dandy for Neal, even though the only clouds out today were ones that dropped stinging sheets of rain. Neal was practically a puppy; he _liked_ crowds. Mike didn't. The muddy wash of emotions slopping around him-anxiety, vexation, pre-flight nerves that reverberated against his own like a tuning fork, and sheer, shrieking boredom he could totally empathize with—was foggy and irritating at the same time like being swaddled in an itchy woolen blanket.

"I hope this line is long enough that we end up missing our flight," muttered Mike, while they inched forward with the rest of the queue. "That would be just about the only thing that could make my day bearable at this point."

"Don't say horrible things like that." As Neal punched Mike on the shoulder, he shook his head as if attempting to banish a pesky bug or nagging notion. "If we miss our plane, we might have to walk all the way to Oslo."

"How would that be a bad thing?" Mike arched an eyebrow as the line continued with its glacial progress.

"You're so geographically challenged." Neal chuckled. "There's this little puddle called the North Sea that might make it difficult for you to arrive in Oslo without getting your feet a bit wet."

"I'd just use my hockey pads as a makeshift raft," countered Mike, snickering. "They need the sweat knocked out of them, anyway, since I never bother to wash them."

"You could have washed them twice in the time we've been on line." Neal's mouth twitched into a petulant pout that probably could have prompted even stone-hearted Herb to relent a rigid requirement. "Why do we have to wait so long to get through security, huh? I mean, do we really look like the dodgy sort with knives and bombs stowed away in the pockets of our carry-on bags?"

"Stow that remark," Phil Verchota, who was standing beside Bill in front of them, hissed in warning as they snaked around a bend in the line that finally brought them within sight of a knot of security officers in tan-and-black uniforms directing travelers into a dozen different security stations, so the one mighty line splintered at the end of its journey like a river dividing into twelve channels to stream into the sea. Each post was staffed by a pair of weary, obviously aggravated security personnel opening people's carry-on bags, making travelers empty their pockets, and performing brisk pat-down searches. "If you don't shut up, a guard will hear your joke, not find it very amusing because nobody with a humorous bone in his body is permitted to work in that field, and subject you to a three hour strip search that will make you miss the plane to Oslo and leave you abandoned in an airport where you'll be lucky to locate anyone who speaks a lick of English."

"You don't scare me." Neal waved a dismissive palm but at least desisted from making any further wisecracks pertaining to the probability of weapons being tucked into their baggage. "Our coaches wouldn't let me get lost in an airport forever. They love my cheerful grin too much to risk never seeing it again, you know."

"Midget players always grow too tall in cockiness when they aren't hazed enough their freshman year." Phil rapped the crown of Neal's forehead with his knuckles, sparking a yelp of protest at this physical contact from the assaulted Neal. "I'll have to cut you back down to size again soon, Neal."

Neal opened his mouth to provide his probably disapproving commentary on this proposal but was chopped off before he could speak a word because they had at last reached the head of the interminable security line, where the security officer barked at Phil in heavily accented English, "Line seven."

As Phil strode over to the seventh station, the guard pointed at first Bill and then Neal, snapping in the same stilted English, "You to line eleven, and you to line two."

While Bill and Neal disappeared to their designated posts, the officer growled at Mike, "Line three for you."

Nodding in acknowledgement, Mike hurried over to station three, where he discovered that the guard was an obese and dull-eyed man whose mouth was full of gum. Chomping on his gum with the enthusiasm a cow displayed when devouring a particularly lush patch of pasture, the officer examined the contents of Mike's backpack and pockets before gesturing for Mike to spread his arms like a goose in transit for a pat-down search.

"Get on." The guard waved tetchily once he had finished running his palms rapidly over Mike's body. "You checked out fine. Can't you see I'm busy over here?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you." Mike swiftly retreated from the security station and joined the cluster of his teammates who had already been cleared by security.

Ten minutes later, when everyone had finally passed inspection, the team led by Herb with Coach Patrick bringing up the tear to ensure that no stragglers remained in Stockholm wended their collective path through the thronging concourse to their gate, where they received the unpleasant update that their departure would be delayed for an hour because of the storm fronts colliding over the North Sea.

"You can't control the weather." With a bracing shrug, Bill plopped onto one of the terminal's plastic seats and removed _Sophie's Choice _from the front compartment of his backpack. Flipping to the page where his bookmark rested in his novel, he added, "All you can do is make the best of it."

"Yeah, there are no bad storms—just poor clothes." Flashing a wry grin, Phil slipped into the chair next to Bill, unfolded a copy of a newspaper that he had apparently gotten from the hotel's concierge after all from his carry-on bag, and commenced to doodle funny captions on the pictures accompanying the front page news bulletins with a pen that he had whipped out of his pocket.

Intrigued by this amusing artwork, Pav, silent as ever, wedged himself into the seat next to Phil and watched the creation of the cartoons with a slight smile on his face. His quiet audience seemed to please Phil, who went on merrily, "Nice to have a witness to my artistic genius for a change. Maybe my stick people will provoke appropriately reverential applause this time."

"I hate to break it to you, but rolled eyes are a million times more likely," Rob, bent over his backpack as he completed what was probably his umpteenth check that he had everything packed, stated acerbically. "Oh, and, crap, it looks as if I'm low on gum."

With a snort, Mike surmised that this meant Rob was down to a mere two extra packs. After all, Rob was the person whose hockey bag was so loaded with spare water bottles, excess rolls of tape, and boxes of Band-Aids in case of blisters that it was a marvel any actual equipment could fit.

"I should go find a Seven Eleven and get more." Decisively, Rob zipped his backpack up again. "I've got nothing better to do while I wait, anyhow."

"I'll come, too," volunteered Mark. "It wouldn't hurt me to stretch my legs some more before I get on the plane, and you probably shouldn't go wandering around by yourself in a foreign airport."

Ever ready to launch into debate mode at a second's notice, Rob argued, "It's not wandering around, Magic, if I've got a purpose and a destination. Wandering around implies aimless meandering, and, if there's anything I'm not, it's aimless—"

The rest of Rob's comment was swallowed by the crowd as Mark and Rob drifted off into the hordes flooding the concourse.

As he watched Mark and Rob fade into the multitude, Jack nudged Mike in the ribs. "Hey, Rammer. Want to take something to help you deal with your airborne nerves?"

"A horse tranquilizer?" Mike wrinkled his nose. "Is that what you have in mind for me, genius?"

"Nah." Jack smirked. "I was thinking of something just as strong that tastes better. Let's see if we can find a bar. A beer or ten will drown all your fears."

"Hmm." Mike mulled over this. Beer might make him barf on the plane if there was any turbulence en route to Oslo, but it might soothe his nerves, since every college-educated individual understood that there were few problems in the universe that could not be placed in proper perspective by appropriate amounts of alcohol. "Isn't it a bit early to get wasted?"

"What diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain is afflicting you right now?" Obviously interpreting Mike's question as assent, Jack dragged Mike into the teeming concourse in search of a bar. "It's definitely five o'clock somewhere, you prude."

"It's about five in the morning here," grumbled Mike, but he allowed Jack to lead him on a quest for a beer or ten.

Unfortunately, after what felt like nearly an hour of searching that did not turn up so much as a shiny beer advertisement nonetheless a bar, they had to concede defeat on their mission.

"I guess we should head back." Jack glowered. "I can't believe there's all these people flocking around and not one bar. This bullshit would never be tolerated in Charlestown, I assure you. There would be riots in the streets."

"Do you know the way back to the gate?" Mike frowned as this doubt suddenly crossed his mind. His sense of navigation had been thrown for about fifty loops during the twists and turns they had taken on their journey for a drink. "I can't remember it at all."

"Not exactly." Jack's face split with a confident smile that only increased Mike's urge to fret. "Just trust my gut. It will guide us back like a homing pigeon."

"Of course, because it was your gut that got us lost in the first place," grated Mike, his jaw clenching as he tried not to muse about Phil's quip about the coaches abandoning dawdling players in the Stockholm airport. "Admit it, your sense of direction is limited to a nose for trouble and a liver for alcohol poisoning."

Jack was about to retort but his focus was distracted by the sight of Mark and Rob, whose gloomy expressions suggested that their errand had been no more of a dazzling success than Mike and Jack's, standing apart from the crowd and craning their necks in all directions as though optimistic of detecting a signpost popping out of nowhere to point them back to the gate.

"What's up, boys?" Shooting off this conversational gambit, Jack sidled up to join Mark and Rob with Mike on his heels. "Got your gum, eh?"

"Nope." Rob emitted an aggrieved exhale. "Did you know there is not a single Seven Eleven in this fucking concourse, or if there is, Mark and I can't find it. I repeat for the slower members of the group: no Seven Eleven. What the hell is up with that? Don't they have Seven Elevens everywhere, including on the moon for the damn astronauts? Oh, and would you care to put a bet on how helpful the friendly locals have been in helping us locate anything, because the odds would not be in your favor? Every time we ask where we can find a pack of gum, they stare at us as if we've just sprouted three noses and six eyes."

"Sweden probably doesn't have any Seven Elevens." Jack's blue eyes glittered like sapphires with mischief. "Didn't they teach you that on Diversity Day at your high school, Mac?"

"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Rob, who had been raised in a gated community where the neighborhood charity case had probably been a public defense attorney or an accountant. "Diversity Day at my high school involved a bunch of spoiled brats showing off their pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa that they snapped over their summer vacations. Our conception of celebrating diversity was being sensitive to the fact that our ancestors all came from different counties in England and Scotland."

"So reassuring to have a lily-white, blue-blooded American around in a strange land." Jack chuckled. "You and Mark wouldn't happen to know the way back to the gate, would you?"

"If we knew the way back to the gate, would we really be milling around here like idiots?" Plainly peeved by an inquiry he deemed as lacking in intellectual merit, Rob rolled his eyes. "Do you ever think before you pose stupid questions that have obvious answers, OC?"

"Standing around arguing isn't going to do any good," interjected Mark quickly before Jack could fire back with his own burning assessment of Rob's mental acumen. "We should just take a stab at a direction. In five minutes, if we don't stumble across a map or some sign of the gate, we should turn back and take a shot at the other way."

"Let's go left." Brusquely, Rob walked forward in the direction he mentioned. "I feel like the gate is to our left."

"Well, if you have a feeling, the rest of us should blindly follow it like the proverbial three mice," teased Jack, but, for lack of a better plan, he, Mike, and Mark trailed along beside Rob.

"I hope that we won't be left behind." Biting his lip, Mike recognized that he would rather fly than be stranded in an unfamiliar airport forever. Talk about being a stranger in a strange land. "I don't want to be stuck here until the world ends."

"Relax, Rammer." Rob clapped him on the shoulder. "Mark is with us. Herb isn't going to leave his star player to rot in some Swedish airport."

"I wouldn't bet the ranch on that, Mac." Mark shook his head. "Dad and Herb are such intense rival coaches that Herb would most likely be ecstatic to lose me forever in an airport. Just daydreaming about that sort of epic revenge would probably be the highlight of his year."

Presumably unenthused by the prospect of being trapped in an airport indefinitely, Mark suggested, "Should we split up and look for the gate in two separate groups? Then the group that makes it back first can tell everyone else where the other one is, so they don't leave without us, while we go out to lead the other group back to the gate."

"Don't be dumb." With an aura of absolute impatience, Rob clicked his tongue. "Given our atrocious navigational skills, we'd never find one another again after we split up."

"No need to get all testy with me." Mark's eyes narrowed. "It wouldn't do you any harm to remember that we're all trying to think of a solution to the same problem."

"Well, it's not my fault that you suck at thinking." All obstinacy, Rob lifted his chin for combat. "No wonder I get irritable listening to the crappy ideas that you yank out of your ass."

"There's a directory." Mike noticed a color-coded map coming into view as they rounded another corner and jabbed an excited finger at it. "Let's see if we can find our gate on it."

With mumbled apologies, the four of them jostled through the elbows of their fellow travelers until they were close enough to study the board. They couldn't translate most of the Swedish words, but they could match the number of their gate with one of the numbers of what seemed to be the gates on the directory.

"It looks like we want to head right." Jack bestowed a taunting smirk on Rob. "Your feeling was totally off-base as usual, Mac."

"Bullshit." Rob stuck out his tongue as they moved off in the direction they hoped would bring them to their gate. "When I said the gate was to our left, I was clearly referring to stage left, since all the world's a stage."

"Thanks for that steaming mound of horse crap, Shakespeare." Jack chortled. "Next time you want to take a dump, though, just use a toilet."

Walking toward the right and following the path they had gleaned from the directory, they hustled through the jammed concourse and arrived at their gate just as the PA system blared boarding for the plane's first-class passengers.

"You boys are cutting it rather fine," chided Coach Patrick as the breathless, crimson-cheeked quartet of Mike, Mark, Jack, and Rob hurried over to melt into the fold of their teammates awaiting their boarding call. "I was afraid I would wind up having to miss the flight to search for you."

"Sorry," said Mark, as the four of them fumbled in their backpacks to extract their passports and boarding passes. "We didn't realize that it would take almost an hour to _not _find any gum."

"Don't worry about it." Coach Patrick tapped Mark on the head. "Just try not to let it happen again."

Mike expected Herb to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to chew them all up and spit them back out again for being irresponsible imbeciles, but Herb looked icily indifferent to their re-appearance. Perhaps, as far as he was concerned, it would have served them right if they had wandered onto the runway and been trampled by a taxing aircraft. That would certainly teach them a lesson they would never forget, at any rate.

In a rush of adrenaline from the race back to the gate and relief that he would not be abandoned at an airport, Mike boarded the plane. As he secured his backpack under his assigned seat for takeoff, he discovered that he had the aisle one in the row he shared with Phil and Bill.

Clutching his armrests and doing his best to pretend he was anywhere but on a plane preparing for takeoff, Mike shut his eyes and prayed fervently to a God he hoped was listening that the plane would not crash.

"Take a deep breath, Rammer." Bill, who was in the chair next to him, squeezed Mike's wrist. "It's going to be just fine, you'll see. The flight will be over before you know it."

"No, it won't." Mike did his best to not hyperventilate as he heard a stewardess outline emergency procedures first in brisk Swedish and then in choppy English. "We haven't even taken off yet, and you can't promise we won't crash once we do lift off, because we could be just as doomed as that college rugby team that had that plane crash in South America a few years back."

"That's not such an awful precedent." Phil's voice observed from the window seat, as the plane rocketed into motion, and Mike gritted his teeth. "If memory serves me correctly, I recall that a decent number of those rugby players survived their ordeal."

"Yeah." Mike's stomach lurched while the plane gathered more momentum charging down the runway. "They survived via cannibalism by eating their dead teammates, to which I say a resounding no, thank you. I'd prefer to starve than to eat my friends' corpses."

Mike had heard his mother recount this chilling tale on innumerable occasions, since it was one of her favorite methods of driving herself insane with worry because her son was playing college hockey. She envisioned a thousand crises befalling him every day, but at least she wasn't as much of a perpetual embarrassment as Dad.

After all, it had been Dad who had insisted that the U offer Mike a full scholarship when Herb had come calling on a recruiting visit. Mike had screamed himself hoarse and nearly shattered a lung bellowing at his father for ruining his life as soon as Herb left the house, since he didn't want to play college hockey anywhere but the U even if he had to pay for the privilege. The next day, though, Herb had phoned to extend a full scholarship. He had been able to go to the U, but he had to endure Herb witheringly referring to him as a prima donna in vengeance. Consequently, Dad was free to persist in his plans of dashing Mike's dreams and making everybody hate him while claiming to have nothing but the best paternal intentions…

Mike's stomach flew as the plane lost contact with the ground, and inertia sent him slamming against his cushioned headrest. Pressure pricked his sinuses and clouds formed in his ears as the plane sliced through the atmosphere.

"Look at me, Rammer." Bill's placid tone pierced through Mike's fear like a knife lancing a boil. As Mike reflexively opened his eyes to obey his hero, he found Bill gazing at him seriously. "Nothing bad is going to happen to you as long as I'm around to keep you out of trouble, scamp. This plane will get to Oslo even if I have to climb out and push it myself. I promise. You trust me, don't you?"

"Definitely." Mike managed to contort his features into the ghost of a grin. Although his rational mind was well aware that nobody could propel a sinking plane to its final destination, his heart was reassured, because, if he could have faith in anyone, it was reliable Bill Baker. "I'm going to pull myself together now, I swear."

"At any rate, we've gotten you through takeoff even if we were reduced to discussing cannibalism, which, for the record, Rammer, isn't exactly a traditional small talk topic in just about any circumstance you can imagine." Phil tugged down the tray attached to the seat in front of him and positioned his newspaper on it, continuing to modify the pictures complementing the articles, while a stewardess paced down the aisle, distributing documents for the passengers to fill out for the Norwegian customs. "Now for my next masterpiece. I think this snazzy gentleman would benefit from having his nose replaced with an elephant's trunk…"

"There's a look right off the glossy cover of a fashion magazine." Bill emitted an appreciative laugh and rapped his finger on the ink face of a chic lady in the newspaper. "She needs a nice handlebar moustache to complete the look she's aiming for. Then she'll be ready for her Hollywood debut."

Graffiting the newspaper and filling out the form for Norwegian customs distracted Mike from his fear of flying until the horrible headwinds their plane had been battling a majority of the trip worsened suddenly as they approached Oslo, since it was a little too late to divert to someplace where the weather was more amenable. _Wings, don't fail us now_, Mike thought, trying not to contemplate how far in the air he was.

A woman two chairs behind him burst into tears and hysterically bugled her opinion, which was maybe not exactly unshared among some of the other passengers (or even the crew, for that matter), that the plane's crash was imminent.

"Ninny." In the aisle seat opposite Mike, Rob glanced up from _The Great Gatsby _long enough to provide this incisive character analysis before burying his nose back in the classic, and how he could read without vomiting was a mystery to Mike.

"It's going to crash!" Her British accent making her vowels more strident, the panic-stricken woman shrilled louder than an SOS signal. "Oh, I just know it is!"

A stewardess bustled over to the distraught woman and squatted beside her. Internally, Mike noted that only stewardesses, Olympic gymnasts like Nadia Comaneci, and agile dancers like his own beautiful girlfriend Jill were able to squat with any degree of poise; it was a rare and graceful talent. He reflected on this insight into the opposite gender while the stewardess softly consoled the histrionic woman, quieting her careful word by careful word.

Mike didn't know about anyone else on the flight except the frenzied woman, but he personally was scared enough to poop peach pits. Outside the windows, there was nothing to be seen but a buffeting curtain of ominous gray cloud and pelting rain. The plane rocked nauseatingly from side to side, jolted by gusts that seemed to sweep from everywhere at once. The engines thrummed as if they were cranked up to maximum to provide as much partial compensation as possible, and, as a result, the cabin floor vibrated under their shoes.

Behind Mike, several travelers moaned in an international babble of Tourist, another stewardess distributed fresh airsick bags, and a spiffily suited businessman in the row immediately after them upchucked into his newspaper.

"That's what I feel like doing when I peruse the morning news," murmured Phil, as Mike mentally ordered his breakfast to remain in the confines of his stomach. He was not going to put himself through the acidic agony of a bout of sympathetic barfing today.

At least the woman two rows behind them was causing less of a racket now that the stewardess appeared to have allayed the worst of her nerves. She was snuffling and honking into a wadded tissue, but had ceased broadcasting her dire predictions about the flight's probable conclusion to the cabin at large.

The stewardess gave her a final pat on the shoulder and rose just as the plane jerked in its most severe lurch yet. Gasping, the stewardess stumbled forward and landed in the lap of the besuited businessman who had hurled into his newspaper, exposing a lovely length of nylon thigh. The businessman blinked and then rubbed her kindly on the shoulder blade. She beamed back, but Mike thought the strain showed on her expression. She had to be feeling that this had been a heck of a flight for which no paycheck could adequately compensate her for the anguish she had suffered.

There was a ping as the light prohibiting smoking re-materialized over their seats, and a voice emerged from the PA system.

"This is the captain speaking," a clipped voice informed them first in Swedish and then in English. "We're ready to begin our descent to Oslo airport. It's been a rough flight, for which I apologize. The landing may be a bit rough also, but we anticipate no true difficulty. Please observe the signs about fastening seatbelts and refraining from smoking. We hope you enjoy your stay in the Oslo area, and we also hope-"

Another harsh bump rattled the plane and then dropped the craft with the sickening plunge associated with a malfunctioning elevator plummeting down a shaft in a skyscraper. Mike's stomach performed a queasy hornpipe as many people—not all females by any means—shrieked, whimpered, or wailed. Rob's _Great Gatsby _at lastvanished into his backpack for the turbulent duration of the journey.

"That we'll see you again soon on another flight," finished the pilot as if there had been no terrifying interruption of his farewell address.

"I wouldn't deposit that check at the bank yet," Phil groused.

As they descended through the impenetrable storm clouds, Mike recalled a crash that had occurred at St. Paul's airport a few years ago when he was in high school. The conditions had been eerily similar except snow instead of rain had reduced visibility to zero. The plane had caught its undercarriage on a retaining wall near the end of the landing strip, and tragedy ensued. What had remained of the eighty-nine passengers aboard hadn't looked much different in the gory newspaper photographs than Hamburger Helper casserole…

Just as advertised by the captain, the plane came down hard, reuniting with the Earth forcefully enough to dislodge most of the magazines in the rack at the front of the cabin and to knock a cascade of plastic trays out of the galley like oversized playing cards. No one screamed, but Mike heard numerous sets of teeth clack violently together like gypsy castanets.

Then the pitch of the turbine engines lifted to a howl reminiscent of a coyote yowling at the full moon, as the plane braked. While the turbines' wailing subsided, the pilot's voice, perhaps not entirely steady, crackled over the intercom in Swedish and then in English. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at Oslo airport. Please remain in your seats until the plane has come to a complete halt. Thank you."

As the plane taxied toward its appointed gate, Bill faced Mike and uttered a long sigh. "Well, we live to fight another day, Rammer."

"Bill, we aren't done with this one yet." Mike shook his head, wincing at the prospect of the grueling practice and game against the Norwegian national team that awaited them as soon as customs cleared them and they collected their luggage from the carousels. Today was just going to be a progression from bad to worse of trials and barely averted disasters. He could already feel that knowledge hammering in his bones and aching in his sinuses.


	3. Chapter 3

"_A blind hen can also find a grain."—__**Norwegian equivalent to the English expression of a broken clock being right twice a day.**_

**Author's Note: **As with the Swedish foods and expressions, I've striven to ensure that the Norwegian proverbs and foods are portrayed as accurately as possible, but everything is based on online research rather than personal experience, since I've never been to Norway or Sweden. The fact that there was a practice after the boys arrived in Oslo before they competed against the Norwegian National team is based on information compiled from several different sources and player interviews. Everything about the power play is based on observations from my many years as a hockey fan and a useless but enthusiastic tagalong at the practices my dad ran when coaching my brother's youth hockey teams.

Objects in Motion

"Our specialty teams are such an embarrassment that they would make a blind woman who has never so much as touched a hockey stick weep for humanity," Herb barked by way of greeting as the team emerged from the unfamiliar locker room in the Oslo rink where they would be playing against the Norwegian National team later that evening and clustered around the glass where Herb and his marker were prepared to outline the first of his lunatic practice drills. "That's utterly unacceptable, because specialty teams determine victory or defeat as much as even strength play. Shorthanded and power play goals are worth the same as regular ones. It's difficult to find a championship team without at least a decent penalty kill and power play. What we refer to for lack of a better term as our power play—"

"You may not be creative enough to think of a better word, but don't confine us all to your limitations," Jack, standing to the left of Mike, offered in a snide stage whisper. "I've invented the word power kill to describe our power play, and I believe it sums up perfectly our pathetic attempts to score with a man advantage."

Cringing internally as he imagined their power play, Mike reflected that it was one of the more unfathomable mysteries of the universe that a team such as theirs that thrived at even strength could become so terribly anemic with a man advantage. It defied all logic that it should be harder for them to score with more players on the ice than their opponents, but that was how it seemed to be.

"Power kill is _two_ words," hissed Rob from behind them. "Learn to count, idiot, before all of us have our IQ lowered fifty points just by listening to you. Anyway, power outage is a better term for what happens during our power play. You see, any momentum we'd built up before the so-called power play is sapped from our muscles the instant the referee blows his whistle to appoint a penalty against the other side. Since energy cannot disappear and just is transferred to something else, the other team steals from us the energy needed to kill off the penalty and maybe—if they're really lucky—even score afterward. Power outage is the most apt word to describe the draining of energy from us into the opposition once a penalty has been called against them."

"I like power failure," Mark suggested in a quiet voice from next to Rob, his blue eyes gleaming with a sly mischief. "It has an ironic ring, especially since it's a contradiction in terms."

"As I was saying before my practice was so rudely invaded by a gaggle of gossiping geese, our power play is particularly atrocious." Herb shot the four of them a scorching glare that made it abundantly plain he would gleefully force-feed them arsenic at the first opportunity as retaliation for their interrupting his practice with what he doubtlessly perceived as juvenile jokes. Unleashing a flurry of X's and lines on the glass with his marker, Herb continued, his manner as crisp as blades cutting through fresh ice, "This jumble is what our power play resembles a vast majority of the time. It's as far from being a perfect picture as the Mona Lisa is from being a damn finger painting. How do we start turning this mess into a masterpiece?"

Herb arched an eyebrow at the team, but none of them dared to venture a guess. Clicking his pen against the glass in an irascible tattoo, he snapped, "No volunteers, huh? I asked a question, and I expect an answer now. If I just wanted to hear myself talk, I'd shout under a bridge and listen for my damn echo."

Here, he paused, his eyes flicking over the assembly in search of a victim like a net cast into the sea to catch unwary fish. When his gaze lit on one of his favorite targets for verbal flogging, he rapped out, "How about you, Verchota? I haven't heard from you for awhile. Have you got any brilliant ideas bouncing around in that hollow head of yours?"

"The locus of action is skewed too much toward the perimeter as opposed to the interior," replied Phil, and Mike, massaging his temples, resigned himself to the fact that this was another one of Phil's answers that was on too lofty an intellectual plane for him to comprehend as more than mumbo jumbo. Somewhat pettily, he hoped that Herb was just as lost in this onslaught of massive vocabulary words, since that was a fate he definitely deserved after accusing a decorated student of being a dunce for probably the millionth time this week. "We need to shift the locus of action from the perimeter to the interior to increase the success rate of our power play. Statistically speaking, shots fired closer to the goal have a greater chance of finding the back of the net, so we should play the odds and shoot from near the crease where our probability of scoring is highest. QED."

"That sounds like a lot of big words to say nothing." Herb emitted a derisive snort. "What the hell does that even mean in English, Verchota?"

"We need someone to plant themselves near the crease during our power play to try to score garbage goals, Coach," explained Phil, and, upon hearing this clarification, Mike scowled. He understood terms like garbage goals, but he had no earthly idea what a locus of action was, so why couldn't Phil have given the simple response the first time around to spare them all the shame of feeling like imbeciles? "That will restore some vital signals to our rapidly dying power play."

"Right." To illustrate his instructions, Herb drew another diagram on the glass. "Our current power play is hampered by the fact that most of our time is spent making long, slow passes away from the goal crease. Near the net might be bloody nose alley, but sometimes it's good tactics to stand there anyway so you can redirect a teammate's shot into the net. Get as many shots on net as you can. Don't wait for the perfect play, but don't shoot unless you think you can score or get a rebound. If you can't shoot, pass the puck to a teammate. Short, swift passes confuse and tire the penalty killers. Long, slow passes around the perimeter just make it so that the penalty killers don't have to work to cut time from the clock. Shots, short passes, and garbage goals are the keys to a successful power play. Got it, gentlemen?"

"Yep!" chirped Neal, all exuberance, as he spun his helmet around his fingers like the propeller of a helicopter. "Slapshot from the point! Whoosh! Bang! Off the crossbar and into the net!"

"Put that helmet on," Herb ordered, giving Neal a tap on the head that, as far as Mike was concerned, bore a suspicious resemblance to a pat. That settled it: Neal was officially a puppy now that he had been publically petted by the austere Herb Brooks. "Most of those slapshots clock in at over ninety miles per hour. We don't want you getting concussed by one of those, do we?"

"No, Coach," piped Neal, clipping the helmet strap shut beneath his chin. "That sounds full of ouch. Better to break my helmet than to crack my skull."

Deciding not to bother asking himself how much sugar Neal might have consumed since breakfast, Mike focused his attention on their coach as Herb resumed, evolving into the philosophical mode that typically forecasted the conclusion of another one of his long line of lectures, "Motion is the cornerstone on which every effective power play is built, boys. Newton said it best. Objects in motion remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force, and objects at rest remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. Let's apply physics to hockey, and make sure that our power play—and our team—is an object in motion with that tendency to remain in motion."

Herb stayed silent for several seconds to permit this sentence to seep into the brains of his players and then clapped his hands together brusquely. "Jimmy, you'll be in the far net; Janny, you go in the near one. Neal, I want your line running the power play on the far end with Jack and Rammer manning the points. Baker, Morrow, Johnson, and McClanahan, you'll be on the penalty kill at the far end. Strobel and Silk, you'll be warming the bench for the first rotation, but, for the second, I'll run you through your paces until your daydreaming about riding the pine again. Everyone else, you'll be working with Coach Patrick at the near net, and your particular assignments will be left up to him. Shift it into first gear now. We don't have all day to waste talking."

As he skated toward the far net, Mike was nudged by Jack, who inquired solicitously, "Since it was Herb who did approximately ninety-five percent of the talking, do you reckon he's admitting that blowing all that hot air was a waste of time?"

"Nope." Mike shook his head. "He was probably calling us out for interrupting him. Most likely he wanted us to feel guilty for wasting his and our innocent teammates' precious time."

"Hmm." Jack's eyes glistened playfully as he pretended to ruminate over this observation. "I guess I do feel guilty for speaking without raising my hand first. Now I'll have to go to Confession at the next available opportunity to atone for my sin."

"You're such a good Catholic," teased Mike, assuming his position behind Steve near the faceoff circle to Jimmy's right, where Neal and Mark were waiting for Herb to arrive and drop the puck.

"Not at all." Jack was completely deadpan. "Good Catholics don't go to Confession. Only lousy Catholics like me need it."

After that, there was no more time for banter, as Herb skated into the faceoff circle and dropped the puck. A brief scuffle for possession ensured, and then Neal slid the puck back to Mike, who accepted it with as much grace as he could muster.

Stickhandling, he glanced around for an open teammate, but saw no one who fit that description, as impossible as that sounded when his side had the man advantage. Mentally condemning them all to a lifetime sentence of garlic breath because every hockey player worth the salt in his sweat recognized that the onus was on those without the puck to make themselves free to receive a pass, Mike chomped on his mouthguard.

He was acutely aware that he had about two seconds more to fritter away before Herb commenced ripping into him more efficiently than a school of piranhas for slowing down the pace of the power play like the prima donna he allegedly was, so he sent the puck sailing toward Neal, who appeared slightly less besieged than everybody else on his side.

Unsurprisingly, Rob intercepted the pass and launched the puck down the ice to the opposite end of the rink, where Coach Patrick was in the midst of organizing another power play drill.

"A rapid pass is as useless as a lifeboat with a hole in its bottom if you don't think before making it, Rammer," bellowed Herb, ready as ever to indulge in a nonsensical simile, as Mike, his cheeks blazing bonfires, collected the stray puck and sped back toward the blueline as swiftly as possible. "You just let McClanahan knock about twelve seconds off the clock there. I hope you're happy."

_Positively giddy with glee_, Mike thought, feeling sour as rancid milk. _The only way I could be more ecstatic is if Mac accidentally sent the puck flying into the stands on his next clearing attempt and received a minor penalty for delay of game, but that isn't likely to happen any time before the sun starts orbiting the Earth, since he's one of the best two-way forwards I've ever met, and he doesn't even make terrible turnovers like lesser mortals. Clone him twenty times, and you'd have a team that would never be anything less than conscientious with or without the puck. _

Finally, he had finished transporting the puck back to the blueline. Not exactly eager to risk humiliating himself further, he fired the puck in Jack's direction and thanked God for deigning to be merciful when no interception occurred.

Jack passed to Rizzo, who was deftly poke-checked by Bill. Bill sent the puck bouncing along the boards to the corner, where Ken, Mark, Steve, and Neal engaged in a scuffle for possession.

"For those of you who have apparently never played a shift of hockey in your life, the point of a power play is to outnumber your opponents at every opportunity to try to create odd-man rushes," Herb snarled. "For instance, if there are two penalty-killers fighting for the puck in the corner, it would behoove you to have three players in on the action."

Taking the hint (if it could even be called something as subtle as that), Rizzo hurried over to join the fray in the corner. His stick flew around in the forest of them for a few seconds, and then he sent the puck hurtling back to Jack on the point.

The puck skidded down the ice past Jack, prompting Herb to explode in a stream of scorn, "Who do I have manning the point on this power play, huh? Is it nobody? That's what it looks like, OC."

By the time this harangue had reached its dramatic conclusion, Jack had regained the blueline and passed the puck to Steve, who finally managed to fire a shot on goal by rifling a wrist shot high on Jimmy's glove side. The fierceness and accuracy of Steve's wrist shot could have made many goaltenders use their pads as portable toilets, but Jimmy remained unfazed as he swallowed the puck in his glove.

_Denied by the omnipresent glove again_, Mike noted inwardly as he frequently did when Jimmy's fast glove save dashed the team's hopes of lighting up the scoreboard in practice. _Nope, we'll never score again. We'll be in a scoring slump until the apocalypse, which is hockey hell for any forward or offensive defenseman. _

"Pathetic power play." As he offered this cutting assessment, Herb blew his whistle to signal a halt to the drill. "Take a water break. I'll expect to see a stronger effort from every one of you next shift. Laziness won't be tolerated on this team."

As they clambered onto the bench for the announced water break, Steve, who was wearing the scowl that indicated he was accusing himself of being nine kinds of idiot, grumbled, "I can't believe I didn't score. I should've had that puck in the back of the net. There's no excuse for me missing the goal like that. I'm so disappointed in myself."

"Relax." Bill clapped Steve's shoulder. "No hyperventilating until we've been doing drills for at least half an hour, all right? We don't want you dying of high blood pressure and oxygen deprivation before the puck has even dropped in the game against Norway."

"Look on the bright side. At least we killed that penalty," put in Mark, sipping from his water bottle, as though their main problem was penalty-killing instead of scoring on the power play.

"That's the bright side, is it? It seems pretty fucking shady to me, because I didn't kill the penalty. You guys-" His jaw clenching, Steve jerked a finger at Mark, Rob, Ken, and Bill—"did. I'm pissed off since our power play sucks ass. Everyone says that even a shitty power play is supposed to convert on every five chances, so, statistically speaking, we should've scored just by accident by now."

"Lay off Mark." Nearly spitting out his mouthful of water, Rob spoke up with considerable indignation although he was the one who appeared to regard it as a wasted day if he hadn't tormented Mark about at least a dozen trivialities. That was one of the many contradictions you had to learn to live with when Rob was your teammate: one minute he would be ripping your neck off; the next he would be out for the blood of anyone else who dared to go after your throat. "It's not his fault that Herb can't run a power play just like Carter can't a country. I'm sure Mark, Bill, Ken, and I will have a chance to stink it up during the next power outage drill. Will that make you happy, huh, Steve?"

"So elated I could do cartwheels around the rink." Steve's sarcastic snort indicated that this sentence did not express his true sentiments.

"Do you have to do this, Steve?" Somehow Neal managed what should have been the physiologically impossible feat of pouting around the rim of his water bottle. "It'll make practice a headache."

"What will make practice a headache?" snarled Steve, all aggression as he turned to glower at Neal.

"You're acting like a bear with a hangover." Neal's pout was working overtime. "You should aim for cheerful clown instead. Brighten up, Steve."

Steve opened his mouth to retort, but was cut off by Rizzo, who said, "Not to pile up on you, Steve, but Neal's got a good point. Why don't you just be quiet if you don't have anything nice to say?"

"Oh, let me soak in the irony." Steve's mouth twisted into a sneer. "Of all the people on this crappy planet, you will now tell me when to shut up."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rizzo's forehead furrowed.

"Well, it's not exactly a secret, or, if it is, your mouth sucks at keeping it quiet, but the only way to get you to shut up is to paste hot glue on your tongue, cover your lips with duct tape, and tie your hands to your sides." Steve rolled his eyes. "Did I do a good enough job explaining the obvious to you now, Rizzo?"

"At least I say nice things when I talk." Rizzo folded his arms across his chest. "Pity you can't say the same, Steve."

_Ah, we're back at square negative one, then_, Mike thought dully as Steve opened his mouth to volley back, and it was almost a reprieve when Herb called an end to their contentious water break by barking out line combinations for the next power play drill, which went about as seamlessly as the first one had.

After over an hour of equally spectacular power play drills, it was an exhausted and red-faced bunch that huddled on the divans of the Oslo hotel as they waited for Coach Patrick to return from the concierge's desk with the keys to their rooms. This process seemed to be more complex than Mike would have assumed, because the concierge and Coach Patrick were engaged in a fervid conversation that sounded further complicated by the fact that Coach Patrick could count on one hand the number of Norwegian words he knew, and the concierge was just about as fluent in English.

Obviously irked enough by the team's lackluster practice to not care whether they all slept on the street in cardboard boxes, Herb, who apparently had no issue procuring his key, disappeared into an elevator.

"Might as well settle in for the long haul," muttered Rob, withdrawing _The Great Gatsby _from his backpack and burying himself behind its pages. "This conflict doesn't seem like it will be resolved any time soon."

"Don't mind if I share, do you?" Jack tilted his head so that he could read over Rob's shoulder.

"I guess not." Rob flipped a page. "As long as you don't cry like a baby every time I turn a page and you aren't ready for the next plot point because Dick and Jane primers are still more on your level, of course."

"That's a riot coming from you." Jack elbowed Rob in the ribs. "Last time I checked you were just looking at the pictures. That's why you're able to tear through classics at such an obscene pace."

"You must be referring to the cover photo." Rob stuck up his nose. "That's the only illustration this book has got, you illiterate moron."

"One minute I'm able to read at the advanced level of Dick and Jane primers; the next, I'm totally illiterate." Jack shook his head in mock reproach. "Your insults are so wildly inconsistent with one another that even a blind goldfish could spot the contradictions immediately. I expected better from you, Mac. What a disappointment you are."

Just when the amiable squabble between Rob and Jack was losing its entertainment value, Coach Patrick, fingers laden with hotel keys, crossed over from the concierge's desk and began passing out keys to pairs of roommates. Two minutes later, everyone except Mike, Neal, Dave Christian, Buzz, Pav, and Bah had gone over to the elevator bank to await a lift up to their floor.

"Boys, I'm afraid there's been a miscommunication with the hotel," Coach Patrick addressed his remaining audience in a manner that implied the misunderstanding was entirely on the hotel's part. "They somehow gave us one fewer room than we reserved. I tried to get another room for us, but the concierge says they're completely booked every night we're here. I need to know whether you boys are okay sleeping three a room, or if I should try to find another nearby hotel to put two of you in. There would be a couch in each room, so no bed sharing would be involved."

"I'm fine sharing a room with Bah and Pav," answered Buzz in a calm tone that made it clear this situation really was no big deal to him. "It should be fun."

"No problem," Bah agreed, nodding seriously. "There'll be plenty of room for the three of us to be more than comfortable."

Pav grinned and bobbed his head in confirmation of the sentiments the other Coneheads had expressed for him.

"I get to sleep on a sofa for several nights in a row."As he pumped his fists, Neal's face was a gigantic, wide-eyed beam. "How exciting. It'll be like a sleepover. I love sleepovers. They're my favorites after pizza and cookies."

"What could be better than a sleepover with Neal?' Dave laughed. "Sign me up on the dotted line right away."

"Yeah." Mike chuckled. "The same goes for me."

"Excellent. Thank you for being so understanding and accommodating." Coach Patrick handed out their keys. "If you unpack in a hurry, there should still be some surgild, torsk, or fiskesuppe for you to enjoy in the dining room, according to the ever reliable concierge."

"Some what?" Mike wrinkled his nose, feeling that he had eaten enough foreign foods with sounds and syllables impossible to wrap his lips around to last him for at least a decade. "Are those weird noises supposed to be yummy foods?"

"Surgild is pickled herring on rye bread, torsk is poached cod with boiled potatoes, and fiskesuppe is a creamy fish soup with carrots and onions." Coach Patrick offered an indulgent smile at Mike's inquiry. "Does that answer your question, Mike?"

"Let me get this straight." Resigning himself to an afternoon of smelly breath, Mike sighed. "Our lunch options are, fish, fish, or more fish?"

"What did you expect?" Coach Patrick arched an eyebrow. "Norway is surrounded by water. What else would they eat except seafood?"

"I don't know." Mike shrugged, promising himself he would find something that was edible and not odiferous during his stay in Norway. "I intend to find out, though. They've got to have at least one decent dessert. It's like a law in Europe that every country has to have a great national dessert, and I'm going to sample as many as possible."


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **The Herbies episode is portrayed differently in this chapter than it is in the movie because for purposes of this fanfic I decided it would be better to base the plot on the more factual accounts of what happened. In real life, Mark Johnson did smash his stick on the boards, Mike was kicked out of the game for fighting and didn't participate in the bag skate, and Buzz was expelled from the game for trying to follow Herb's command to figure out what was going on. Every player has slightly different recollections of the bag skate in Norway, but for this story I chose to rely on Mike and Buzz's comments because the focus would mainly be on them. Feel free to submit any confusion or questions in a review or PM.

"_When the cat is away, the mice dance on the table."—__**Norwegian Proverb**_

Cat and Mouse Game

As if he had a ticking clock instead of a hammering heart tucked inside his ribcage while he collected the puck the Norwegian penalty kill had fired deep into his own zone and skated at top speed toward neutral ice, Mike could feel the last seconds of their power play—earned when one of the Norwegian defenseman with a surname Mike would never be able to remember, spell, or pronounce had hooked Mark Johnson on a breakaway attempt—slipping away like water draining from a sink.

They needed to score to cement their one goal lead over their opponent. That was all Mike could think as he rifled off a tape-to-tape outlet pass to Steve Christoff, who volleyed off one of his renowned rapid wrist shots.

The puck soared over the Norwegian goaltender's shoulder and pinged off the crossbar in a frustrating noise that could have trumpeted the end of the minor penalty, since, at that second, the door to the Norwegian penalty box flew open, and the defenseman who had hooked Mark burst onto the ice. Obviously, the time they had squandered practicing their power play would have been better invested doing something more exciting and educational like counting each ice particle in the rink.

Chomping on his mouth guard, Mike ordered himself to focus on the game before he made some careless error that had the happy result of Herb benching him for the remainder of the period and advanced closer to the Norwegian net, trying to pressure the exhausted penalty killers, as the puck landed near Buzz, who had just come onto the ice for a shift change and who launched a shot.

The puck hit the goalie's knee pad and rebounded into the corner, where Neal, moving faster than any of the Norwegian defenseman on the ice, glided in to retrieve it. Facing the boards, Neal cleared the puck with a quick pass to Buzz. After he had already sent the puck sliding toward Buzz, Neal was charged from behind and rammed into the boards by the Norwegian defenseman who had just been released from the penalty box. Neal's helmet crashed against the glass, as his body slammed against the boards, and he crumbled to the ice.

His eyes narrowing to angry snake slits, Mike mentally reviewed the sequence to make sure that it passed muster as a cheapshot that justified him imparting a very physical education on the dirty player in question. Neal had already passed the puck, so it could not have been a legitimate, clean attempt to play the puck, and it was always a cheap hit to go after a player who wasn't touching the puck. Besides, Mike was practically prepared to swear on a witness stand that the Norwegian defenseman's skates had left the ice prior to making the hit, which meant that the defenseman had been targeting Neal's head.

That was forbidden and punishable not only with a penalty but with fists, because there was an unwritten code in hockey that was even more sacred than the rule book most referees didn't even enforce in a halfway competent manner. Big, physical players weren't supposed to target small, skill players for abuse. They were supposed to pick on players their own size, and Mike was going to teach the stupid Norwegian defenseman that very important lesson.

Oh, and he had no doubt that the Norwegian defenseman was stupid. Every time the Norwegian defenseman set skate blade on ice it was obvious with his vicious checks and boarding that only one thought—hitting—crossed his walnut brain, and whenever the puck came to him in his own zone he never made an outlet pass or charged the puck up ice. Instead, he would shoot the puck along the boards in the vague hope that it would bounce into neutral ice, and you could read in his dull, oil drop eyes the lumbering thought: _I'm out of ideas here, so I'm just going to ram the puck along the boards, and see what happens. _

Mike wasn't out of ideas, though, and he thought it would be very creative if he made the Norwegian defenseman ram into the boards like a puck. That image circled in an endless loop around his head as he raced—the universe spinning out of control into impossible time so that an instant seemed to contain an hour—toward the Norwegian who had offended him by treating Neal like a punching bag. Thinking that he was the sort of dog who would bite when his pack was attacked, Mike tore off his helmet and gloves in the international signal of an impending hockey fight.

A distinctly evil smirk dominated the Norwegian's expression as he hurled off his own helmet and gloves. Adrenaline throbbed through Mike's arteries as the pair of them squared off, each seeking a vulnerability that would incite them to strike first.

What felt like an eternity later but was probably only a second, the Norwegian threw the first punch at Mike, who dodged and unloaded one of his own at the Norwegian's nose, which was oddly crooked as though it had already been broken on several occasions as a result of similar scraps. His hit found its target, and there was a sickly satisfying slap of bone on vulnerable cartilage.

Taking what he was positive any psychologist would define as a perverse pleasure in the blood beginning to stream from his opponent's nostrils, Mike barely felt the blow that split his own lip although he tasted something metallic—probably iron from his own veins since Mom nagged him to eat all his minerals—on his tongue.

The iron from his blood fueling him further, he swung at the Norwegian's ear, as his opponent's fist creamed his right eye. Luckily, Mike spotted where the punch was directed a second before it made contact with his skin, so he closed his eye just before the fist made contact with his flesh. The noise of the hit echoed against his eardrums, but he didn't feel any pain even though he absently acknowledged that there would be a swelling shiner around his right eye by tomorrow morning.

He pulled back his fist, aiming an assault on the Norwegian's mouth, but found himself torn from the fray by an official. The referee shouted something at Mike and his opponent, but Mike couldn't process the words, because he was too busy glancing over his shoulder to check on Neal, who had gotten to his feet and was watching the ruckus with a quizzical tilt to his head as if he couldn't believe he had sparked so ardent a conflict.

Neal was all right then, but Mike didn't have much of a chance to experience relief over this notion, since some of the words spewing from the referee's mouth started to penetrate his skull and he realized that he, along with the Norwegian player, was being tossed from the game for fighting.

"Come on!" Mike was trying to conceal his scorn, but it required all of his control not to roll his eyes to show the contempt he felt for the referee's ruling. Waving his arm in his fury, he continued, voice rising with every aggravated syllable, "Are you blind or just biased? Did you miss that obvious boarding and charging call or what? You're supposed to be ensuring player safety, so don't blame me for doing your job when you won't."

Agitated by an argument that he was not a part of and a situation that he could not manipulate to his advantage, Herb, still standing behind the bench, jabbed a finger at Buzz and snapped, "Go figure out what the hell is going on."

Surprise written all over his face, Buzz skated toward the congregation around the referee, but the official, who had to sense that whatever reins he had once held over the game were falling out of his fingers, interpreted Buzz's approach as a challenge and barked, "You're out of the game, too!"

"What are you on?" Mike was shouting now, but he was just proud of himself for resisting the temptation to stamp his skates. "He didn't even say or do anything! What the fuck are you even punishing him for, huh?"

"Let it go, Rammer." Buzz grabbed onto Mike's elbow and tried to drag him toward the locker room, but Mike dug in his heels as much as he could on a frozen surface and gained enough traction to remain relatively stationary. "It's not that big a deal and certainly not worth getting all fired up about it, okay?"

"No, it's definitely worth getting all fired up about, because it's a damn game misconduct over a phantom offense, and that's about as big a deal as it gets in hockey." Mike yanked his elbow out of Buzz's grasp. "Don't try to calm me down. I have every right to be mad as hell right now."

"Relax." In contrast to Mike's increasing volume, Buzz's tone got softer. "Losing your temper with the zebra will just make things worse."

"You've got to be shitting me," scoffed Mike, but he allowed himself to be tugged away from the harebrained referee toward the locker room, where he would be guaranteed to receive during the next intermission a mighty tongue lashing from Herb for getting himself expelled from the game. Not that he regretted his decision, of course. Neal was his teammate, and people who didn't protect their teammates didn't deserve to have them, as far as he was concerned. "We've already been kicked out of the game. Nothing short of a nuclear fallout is going to make this situation blow any more than it already does."

"Yeah, but if you get the ref riled up, you can bet that he'll be calling everything against our team for the rest of the game." Buzz patted him on the shoulder. "You don't want that, do you?"

"No." Mike gave a scowl that swiftly transformed into a wince as his split lip protested the motion with a fresh wave of pain and blood trickling into his mouth. "I think he's already calling everything against us, though. I mean how else do you explain him throwing you out of the game when you didn't even do anything wrong?"

"A zebra made a bad call." Buzz shrugged as they arrived in the locker room that was heavy with the smell of sweaty pads. "There's nothing new under the sun."

"I wouldn't mind if a lion hunted down that zebra, that's for sure," muttered Mike, wrinkling his nose.

"You'd like to be that lion, I gather." Buzz chuckled. "Let's have Doc patch up those battle wounds of yours."

Since he could practically feel his lip and eye swelling, Mike decided not to protest that he didn't need medical attention and instead took a seat on the metal table. The cool metal pressed against him made him realize how flaming hot his skin was. Sitting down encouraged his lungs to notice how tired they were, because his breath started emanating from him in gasps, a punctuation of exhaustion, and his motionless position prompted his muscles to begin to remember the strain of the brawl. He was regulating his breathing patterns and massaging his biceps when Doc, already holding an ice pack and a jar of ointment, approached him.

"Another scrap for your record book." Peering into Mike's face as if to ascertain that only a black eye and a bloody lip were the toll exacted by the fight, Doc clucked his tongue in a manner that typically indicated the team's medical expert was wondering why he squandered his existence mending pugnacious hockey players who would show their gratitude for his care by inevitably charging back into perilous situations as soon as they were healed. "Sunrise will be coming early to your eye for the next couple of days."

"Don't nag, Doc." Warily, Mike watched Doc twist the cap off the jar of balm and hoped that it wasn't the sort of salve that stung as much as it soothed. "Color in the face is a sign of good health."

"A flush on the cheeks, not a bruise under the eye, is healthy color." Doc dipped a finger in the ointment and spread the oily substance gingerly over the swollen flesh below Mike's eye. "You could keep that in mind before you make me earn my paycheck by patching you up after one of your little fistfights."

"I don't get in _that_ many fights." Mike battled the urge to squirm under Doc's ministrations. Even Doc's tender touch made the sensitive skin of Mike's latest shiner flame in agony, and the balm tickled where it had been applied. "Anyway, the other guy looks much worse than me. Really you should just be grateful that you aren't his team's doctor."

Finished rubbing salve on Mike's wound, Doc closed the lid on the ointment jar with a snap and then put the container down on the table before handing Mike a tissue, commenting in a tone as tart as a crabapple soaked in vinegar, "I'd be more grateful if I could understand what went through your mind when you showed so little concern for keeping your body in one piece. Speaking of being in one piece, press that tissue against the cut on your lip and the bleeding should stop soon."

Pushing the tissue against the slice on his lip as Doc had instructed, Mike thought that he had been hearing similar disapproving remarks from his mom for years as she tended to the scrapes and shiners he inevitably accumulated by standing up for himself and his classmates in a rough-and-tumble Minneapolis neighborhood.

He still remembered that September morning in third grade when he had engaged in schoolyard brawl with the neighborhood's biggest bully, Ricky Mather, because Ricky tugged on the Preston twins' pigtails and stole their lunch money one too many times. Katie and Maggie Preston might have cooties, giggle too shrilly, and slip gossipy notes to one another in class, but they were smaller than Mike and he had known them since Kindergarten—because P and R were a sneeze away from each other in the alphabet, so teachers forever were inserting Mike near the Preston girls on their stupid seating charts—which bought them his loyalty. That was why he had thrown a punch at Ricky's stomach when Ricky made the unwise decision of tormenting Katie and Maggie only a few feet away from Mike on the playground.

Both he and Ricky had been covered in cuts and bruises before the teachers supervising recess could separate them and drag them to the principal's office. Once he had been taken to the warden of his childhood prison, Mike received a stern scolding from the principal and then was sent home. Dad, who had been forced to leave his bread delivery job to pick up Mike since Mom was in bed recovering from a nasty bout of influenza, had been mad enough to spit venom. Resigned to the prospect of a stinging spanking from his father's slipper, Mike with the innocent fatalism of youth had determined that his situation could not be worsened by anything that emerged from his mouth, so he had told his father that Hitler had just been a Ricky Mather nobody had the nerve to punch in the gut until it was too late. That had made Dad snicker, and the slipper spanking had been averted.

That experience had taught Mike everything he needed to know about dealing with bullies. Most bullies, he discovered by virtue of this run-in with Ricky Mather, were big, ugly, and clumsy. They scared people by being able to injure them. They fought dirty. Therefore, if you weren't afraid of being hurt a little and were willing to stick up for yourself and others, a bully might be bested. Talk did no good with bullies. It just encouraged their brutal, domineering tendencies. Hurting was the only language that the Ricky Mathers of the world seemed to comprehend, and that was probably why the world always had such problems just getting along.

"The Norwegian guy went after Neal." Mike shrugged, not particularly caring whether Doc understood his thought process. "Whenever I see someone big pick on somebody smaller just because they think they can get away with it, there's going to be a fight."

"Well, nobody could accuse you of being a bad teammate, even if you are an uncooperative patient." Doc's face softened into a slight smile as he wrapped the ice pack in a towel and handed it to Mike. "The ointment should be dry by now. Hold this against the bruise for ten minutes, and then take it off for ten minutes. Repeat that process for at least a half hour. That should reduce swelling. Understand?"

"Yep, Doc." Nodding, Mike pressed the ice pack bundled in the towel against his bruise and winced as its frigidity met the flaming skin of his shiner. To distract himself from the unpleasant temperature contrast between his bruised flesh and the ice pack, he shoved himself off the table and walked back toward his locker, tossing over his shoulder, "Thanks for the ice and ointment. You're the best."

Mike had just settled himself on a bench when the door to the locker room slammed open and the rest of the team pooled in, looking sweaty and as if they were already done with their emotional investment in this game, since their soft hotel beds had to be singing a siren song in their imaginations.

"How is the game going?" Mike asked Bill, anxious to know what had happened since he had been kicked out of the competition.

"All right." Bill squirted water into his mouth. "We're still up by one goal, but, based on Herb's mood, you'd guess that we're down by one. He's not happy at all."

"Not happy is a euphemism for potentially homicidal." Phil swiped the sweat off his forehead with a towel and then hurled it at Mike's shoulder. "Keep your head up if you like it attached to your neck, which I actually don't see why you would since your face is so hideous."

"I hope you're his first victim, so that the rest of us have time to flee the scene." Catching the towel with some difficulty owing to the ice pack obstructing his vision, Mike launched it back at Phil, aiming it at the older boy's face. "That would serve you right for being an asshole."

At that moment, the locker room door banged open and shut again, and Herb, displaying his customary knack of arriving at the second that cast Mike in the worst possible light, entered just in time to see Mike throw the towel at Phil.

"Spoiling for another fight with someone else bigger than you, Rammer?" Wearing his most intimidating glower, Herb marched toward Mike. Leaning close enough to Mike that he could measure the gap between his coach's front teeth, Herb snapped, "I guess getting chucked out of the game wasn't dumb enough for you. You have to try to outdo yourself in the stupidity competition by getting in a fight with a teammate before you've even taken the ice pack off your eye, don't you?"

Instinctive fear flooded Mike's veins like adrenaline, and he tried to dampen it, because he knew that Herb was a feral dog who could sense fear. The way that Herb's eyes were burning into him as if they were tongues of fire licking into a piece of paper, Mike concluded that this, unfortunately, wasn't a rhetorical question, so Herb expected a response. That was bad, since Mike's mind felt as if it had been wiped blank by a gigantic eraser. Damn it. He had heard so many times from so many assorted sources that humans only used about ten percent of their brains on a regular basis, and right now, he definitely needed the other ninety percent to pick up the slack.

Swallowing to moisten a throat that had gone as dry as a barrel of sawdust, Mike answered in a voice he prayed was appropriately chastened, "No, coach. Of course I don't."

"That's funny, because your actions scream the opposite." Herb shot a final scathing glare at Mike before ripping into his next target. "Baker, you looked lost as an amnesiac on that Norwegian goal. If you're going to interfere with your goalie's field of view like that, make damn sure you block the shot, because your goaltender can't get a good read on the puck if you're screening him. Just use your common sense since I know you've got no hockey sense to work with."

Accepting the correction without argument, Bill nodded, as Steve Christoff chose the wrong time to squirt water into his mouth and became the next recipient of a Herb harangue. "Excellent job there, Christoff. You showed better aim with that bottle just now than you did the whole game with your hockey stick. No observer of your shooting technique can tell whether you're aiming at the net or the pipes. You should be embarrassed by your poor performance tonight."

Herb jerked his arm around the locker room to encompass the whole team in his rant. "All of you should be ashamed of yourselves. I haven't seen any of you put in a strong shift, and there's not been a second where I felt like I was seeing actual effort from anyone on this pathetic excuse for a team. Put the pedal to the metal next period, because if you won't work during the game, we'll work twice as hard afterward. I certainly won't believe you're tired after if you put in zero effort during the game. You'd better give yourselves a swift kick in the ass before I do it for you, since you won't like how I do it."

With that final ominous admonishment hovering in the air like a thunderhead on the horizon, Herb pivoted on his heel and stalked out of the locker room, slamming the door in his wake. For a moment, the only sound was the echo of the door banging shut, and then Eric Strobel remarked, "Well, he certainly likes to increase his chances of cardiac arrest. What's his real gripe with us, anyway? We're winning. What more can anyone ask of us?"

"You're preaching to the choir." Rob scowled at the skate laces he was tightening in his usual intermission ritual to prepare himself for the following period. "He wants to crucify us for not playing with a mania that would suggest we were down by a goal instead of up by one. He's so fucking insane that no shrink or rubber room would be able to cure him of his legions of mental problems."

"He's a bastard," snarled Steve, tossing his water bottle at the floor tiles with more force than the task required so that the resultant inertia caused the plastic to burst, spraying his surrounding teammates with water. As those around him gasped and cursed in protest of this impromptu baptism, he raised his voice to a shout to be heard over the water bottle ruckus. "I wasn't trying to hit the posts with my shots, and if he couldn't see that, he can go screw himself with his own damned lectures."

"I'm not sure that's physiologically possible." Blue eyes agleam like a lake on a spring day, Jack smirked. "I think nouns need to have a physical dimension to perform the verb of screwing."

"Don't provoke your teammates now, OC." Rizzo spoke up before Steve, who had opened his mouth to retort, could volley some doubtlessly unkind words in Jack's direction. "It's been a long day for everyone, but we've just got to get through this game. Then we can get some much needed rest at the hotel. Okay, guys?"

Steve gave a terse, angry nod, and Jack offered an indolent shrug by way of acknowledgement. It was only later—when all the damage it could possibly do had been done—that they learned just how wrong Rizzo had been in his assessment of the situation.

Since he and Buzz had been ejected from the game, they clambered into empty seats a few rows behind their team's bench to watch the action from the stands. However, the fact that his teammates looked as if they were skating through quicksand made the game more painful than exciting to observe, so he soon find himself taking more interest in the halos the arena's lighting created in the glistening braids of the girl in the chair ahead of him. The braids reminded him of Jill, because she would plait her hair like that before some of her dance recitals, and the thought of Jill brought him back to their last afternoon together before Mike left for Europe…

_It was the anniversary of their first kiss, and Jill was leading the way up the winding park path, her graceful footwork and straight spine displaying the perfect posture and poise of a lifelong dancer. Trailing along behind her like the proverbial lovesick puppy, Mike couldn't help but remember the first time he had seen that confident stride when she walked into Miss Jackson's second-grade classroom wearing a flowery dress, Mary Jane flats, and a friendship bracelet around her slender wrist. It was hard to imagine that moment leading to this one when they were headed back to the sacred spot where they had touched each other's lips for the first time. _

_They pushed through tangles of branches and knots of humidity thick enough to squeeze the breath from their lungs. The gummy smell of pine clawed the air as they trudged onward, mosquitoes buzzing around their noses and eyes. At a big, semi-phallic rock, Jill made a right, and then they were standing before their tree: the tree that literally had their initials carved on it and encircled by a heart. Under the heart, a line marked every year they had come here to commemorate their first kiss. _

_Mike was about to make some wisecrack about how nauseating they were, but when he saw the tilt of Jill's chin in the dappled sunlight streaming through the tree boughs, the swan length and beauty of her neck, and the moist moss green of her eyes, he found himself instead murmuring, "I love you, Jill." _

"_You're already getting kissed." Grinning, Jill fiddled with her French braid. "You don't have to try to charm me." _

"_Oh." Flushing, Mike discovered that he couldn't think of anything wittier to say. At least he hadn't been reduced to talking about the weather or the benefits of cranberry juice in keeping the digestive system regular. When it came down to it, life was nothing more than a series of such small victories or controlled disasters. "All right then." _

"_I love you, too." Jill's grin blossomed into a giggle. _

"_Okay, okay." Lifting his palms, Mike feigned being put-out. "You'll get kissed, too." _

_Mike enfolded her in his arms. When she was twelve and he had finally mustered the courage to kiss her, her hair had smelled wonderfully of tropical shampoo and her lips had tasted of strawberry Pixie Stix. Today her hair carried the scent of lilacs and her mouth was spiced with the cinnamon she had sprinkled into the cappuccino she had ordered at the café where they had eaten lunch. _

_The kiss moved like a warm wave from Mike's heart, and Jill curled closer into his embrace, her breasts pressing against his chest. He could feel her racing heart and ragged breathing. His hand wandered down the curve of her spine, and, when their tongues met, he felt a jolt as if the tectonic plate he was standing on had just collided with another…_

He returned to reality with a bump when a cascade of applause and cheers washed over his eardrums. Glancing at the scoreboard, he read the glowing numbers that announced the game had ended with a tied score of three.

"Um, did we tie the Norwegians or did they tie us?" Mike asked Buzz, feeling somewhat guilty for not paying appropriate attention to his teammates' performance, no matter how lackluster it might have been.

"They tied us," replied Buzz, mercifully not commenting on Mike's absentmindedness. "The last two goals were theirs."

"Crap." Mike shook his head, as he watched a doubtlessly irate Herb corral the team toward the red line, and he didn't have to be a detective to predict from this clue that a Herbies marathon was imminent. "Herb's going to blow a gasket. He'd much prefer a comeback to fading in the homestretch."

Buzz was silent as they stared down at their teammates beginning their punishment skate. When the crowd around them showed no sign of departing, and, in fact, began a standing ovation.

"What the fuck is wrong with these people?" hissed Mike, rather vindictively hoping that the Norwegians in the seats around them could translate every word with absolute accuracy. "Have we stumbled across in an arena of total sociopaths or what? Why the hell do they want to watch a lunatic coach torture his players?"

"I'm sure they think it's just some cool demonstration the team is putting on for their enjoyment, and they're trying to be polite by showing their appreciation." Buzz clapped Mike on the shoulder. "Relax. We don't need to get bent out of shape over what complete strangers do anyway."

"Oh, Herb will make it a demonstration all right." Mike's mouth twitched in wry disgust. "I just wonder how long it will take to dawn on the Norwegians that it's not a show they want to see."

Certainly Mike didn't wish to be in the audience for this matinee. He didn't want to watch his teammates suffer through a bag skate, but he couldn't stomach the notion of being the coward who turned his face away from their pain. Although he wouldn't be able to save them from Herb's misconception of justice, he could at least bear witness to the nightmare they were enduring. He would show his solidarity by not averting his eyes no matter how horrible things got in the rink tonight.

What felt like an hour later but might have only been fifteen minutes, several of the skaters collapsed to the ice, and the sound of retching reverberated throughout the arena. The sight of players barfing on the ice alerted the crowd to the fact that this was punishment for the American team, not entertainment for them. All at once, the applause died, and the masses, chattering to one another in a babble of Norwegian, started to drift out of the exits.

"I can't watch this anymore." Buzz lurched to his feet, and Mike, figuring that any action would be better than watching helplessly as his teammates vomited, rose as well. "I'm going down there now."

They made their way against the congested current of spectators flowing out of the arena until they arrived in front of the boards encircling the rink. Herb was too wrapped up in berating the players on the red line before sending them off on another skate that he didn't seem to notice Buzz and Mike's presence by the glass, but Coach Patrick did if the eyebrow he arched in their direction was any indication.

"Should we put on our gear?" Buzz asked, and Mike thought how weird it was that they would both prefer to participate in a bag skate than stay safe in the stands.

"Cool it, Buzz," Coach Patrick rapped out crisply, and, even though he knew that Coach Patrick was trying to shield them from the harsh consequences of Herb's ire, Mike resented the order to not suit up for the punishment skate. He didn't want to be protected; he wanted to be with his teammates no matter what suffering accompanied that solidarity, but he and Buzz couldn't flagrantly disobey a command from their assistant coach.

"We shouldn't have asked permission." Mike could feel the words jabbing into his throat like splinters of guilt. "We should have just changed and came out onto the ice. Then Coach Patrick wouldn't have been able to stop us from skating."

"Sure." Buzz sounded as weary and defeated as Mike felt. "I'll make a mental note of that and do it if this situation ever crops up again, which hopefully it doesn't."

\

After that, there was nothing more to say. They could only watch with miserable impotency as their teammates skated, wheezed, and vomited in a cycle that already seemed as inevitable and eternal as the progression of the seasons. Mike cold feel tears tickling the back of his eyes like feathers, and it took all of his willpower not to let them stream down his cheeks, because he had sworn to himself at the beginning of his time at the U that he would never allow Herb the satisfaction of making him cry. He might have been the youngest member of the team, but that didn't mean he was going to cry like a baby.

His resolve was tested when the lights in the arena were switched off, plunging the rink into darkness, and Herb kept the team skating, although most of them could barely stand up, in what had to be the dictionary definition of both the meanings of madness.

_This isn't real_, Mike tried to tell himself even though he knew that the thought was an utter lie. _It can't be real. It's way too crazy to be true. Maybe I'll wake up in a minute to an alarm clock in Stockholm to discover that the day hasn't even begun yet, and it's definitely proof of how much of a nightmare this situation is that I'm hoping that I'll have to get on a plane soon, but that's a price I'd gladly pay to stop this horror. _

_Yeah, right_, his more cynical side thought, _that will happen when pigs fly when pigs fly though this arena. Hey, why not take advantage of the opportunity to go completely crazy in every way and imagine something even more improbable like riding the same flying pigs to Norway instead of an airplane? _

As if Mike's ideas of improbable occurrences and going completely crazy in every way summoned both, Mark—whom Mike couldn't recall so much as raising his voice to retort something cross at anyone—chose that moment to smash his stick against the boards during a relative lull in the punishment marathon. At first, Mike was convinced that his eyes had deceived him in the darkness or that his mind had cracked under the strain of witnessing this cruel and unusual punishment of his teammates, but the sound of shattering wood as the stick split in half and the clatter that followed as both parts fell to the ice couldn't have been manufactured by his imagination. Nor could the way the constellation of players near Mark folded closer around him as if to protect him from Herb spotting that he now had no stick.

The cluster around Mark couldn't shield him forever, especially because Herb's flinty gaze was already sweeping over the exhausted assembly on the ice, the stoniness of his expression establishing more effectively than words that he was determined to uncover the culprit and then roast them on a spit.

This observation rocketed Mike into motion. Dashing toward their bench, he snatched a stick from the hogshead of spare ones they kept in case sticks broke during the game. He didn't have time to check the names written with varying degrees legibility at the top in tape, so he grabbed the stick closest to him and hurried along the boards until he reached Mark, noting inwardly that perhaps it shouldn't have been such a shock that Mark had lost his temper in such a dramatic fashion. After all, news bulletins about serial killers always had the shell-shocked neighbors gibbering about how the cold-hearted, psychotic murderer had been such a quiet, upstanding guy, so the team should probably just be counting itself lucky that only a stick was broken when Mark snapped…

"Psst…Magic," he whispered with all the volume and fervor he dared to employ when Herb was searching for victims to skewer into hockey player kabobs. To his relief, Mark spun around to face him immediately, and he catapulted the stick over the boards to Mark, who caught it and flashed him the ghost of a grateful grin and thumbs-up.

As he rushed to rejoin Buzz, Mike heard Herb bellowing with all the rage of a baited bull unable to locate the offending matador, "If I ever see a boy smash his stick against the glass again, I'll skate you until you die! Again!"

Trying to ignore the sound of blades slicing through ice, Mike, who had arrived beside Buzz, muttered, "Do you think he did see who smashed the stick against the glass?"

"I don't know." Buzz was studying Herb speculatively. "Given that Mark's father is his biggest rival, things could get very complicated on this team if he did see Mark break the stick."

"You mean he would cut Mark for snapping the stick?" His eyes widening, Mike gave a shiver that had nothing to do with the glacial temperature in the rink. "He can't do that. Mark's got this eerie habit of making the impossible maneuver just look easy and smooth. We don't have a snowball's chance in the dog days of August of medaling without him. Herb has to understand that."

"Yeah, and maybe he does," answered Buzz slowly, as if he were developing this theory as he spoke. "You know, Rammer, even Herb's worst critics wouldn't accuse him of being dumb, so I think he's smart enough to realize that he could discover who broke the stick by checking whose name was written on it. I bet he didn't even look because he didn't want to see."

"Oh." Not exactly pleased to be essentially reduced to a meaningless role in the proceedings once again, Mike scowled. "I guess that means what I did was totally useless after all. Great to know."

"Every good deed has a point." With a slight, serene smile, Buzz clapped Mike's shoulder. "You made it easier for Herb not to see, and I bet he noticed that."

"I'll have you know I was much more subtle than that." Mike stuck out his tongue. "I'm certain he didn't notice anything."

"Yep, you're the king of subtlety. You were about as subtle as a charging ram in the spring, which is pretty darn impressive." Buzz chuckled. Then, shifting more toward the serious, he added, "Don't worry, Rammer. If you take a long enough view, everything turns out all right in the end. That's the best thing about life."


	5. Chapter 5

"_As the old birds sing, so do the young ones tweet."—__**Norwegian Proverb**_

Old Birds Sing

Curled in a ball like a turtle retracted into its shell, Mike sat in the desk chair of his hotel room. He was trying to pretend that he couldn't hear the groans and curses echoing from the bathroom where Neal and Dave were soaking their sore feet in a tub of cold water and ice, but he was having limited success in this venture. Most inconveniently, his powers of denial seemed to have been exhausted during the Herbies marathon, and now he saw and believed every wince and moan his teammates made whenever they so much as twitched a throbbing muscle.

Pinching the fleshy fold between his eyebrows, Mike thought that Herb was vicious enough to make a serial killer look like a cuddly teddy bear. Nobody should ever have been forced to participate in or witness the pure torture of that punishment skate. He couldn't imagine any other coach he'd had doing such a thing. Sure, his high school football coach would line them up and make them charge one another in full equipment when he felt like the team was slacking off in practice, but the madness would end after a couple of repetitions, and they'd be back to running scrimmages. Herb's discipline was on an entirely higher scale of sadism...

As he massaged his temples with his palms, Mike reflected that he needed someone to comfort him, because clearly he was unable to console himself right now. Calling Jill or his parents was a possibility, of course, but that unfortunately entailed figuring out what time it was back in Minneapolis since he didn't want to awaken them in the middle of the night for anything less than an emergency, and, given how tired his brain felt, he would probably mistakenly calculate the time in Hong Kong instead of in the Twin Cities.

Biting his lip, Mike felt very alone although he knew that Neal and Dave were only a few yards away from him soaking their feet in the bathtub, and alone was just about the last thing he wanted to be right now. Good Lord spare him, but he hadn't been this miserable since the end of last season when Bill had been coming off a leg injury as the Final Four approached and it dawned on him that he would be expected to be his team's number one defenseman in its battle to bring another championship banner to the U. That had been such a terrifying prospect because nobody could hope to fill Bill's skates, but Bill had been able to calm him down and give him the fortitude he needed to take that first step on what seemed like an impossibly long and rocky path.

Perhaps Bill would be able to accomplish a similar feat tonight. Squashing the shame that came from the knowledge that he was seeking solace from Bill when it was Bill who had endured a worse ordeal, so, in a remotely fair universe, it would have been Mike comforting Bill. Then again, in a remotely fair universe, Mike noted inwardly as he walked down the hallway to the room Bill was sharing with Phil. As his slippers shuffled through the shaggy carpet covering the corridor, Mike remembered last season's visit to an injured Bill…

_Practice had ended less than a half hour ago, and Mike, who had a paper to finish for a philosophy professor so out of touch with reality that she was convinced lightbulb jokes about existentialists were as witty as anything in a Saturday Night Live script, decided to head over to Stub & Herb's to buy a Club sandwich and a can of Coke to buoy him through his essay writing nightmare. Since Bill was still coming off his leg injury and a post-practice trudge to the dining hall would probably feel like a run across America, Mike figured he would drop by Bill's dormitory to see if he should get a sandwich and a soda for his wounded hero. _

_As he was dressed in the jeans and sweatshirt that defined the wardrobe of a typical college student, it was easy for him to slip into the dormitory behind a knot of giggling girls, and he rode the elevator up to Bill's floor, trying not to think about the writer's block he would experience when he stared at the blank sheet of paper in his typewriter or how pathetic his defensive work would be when he tried to take Bill's place on the team. _

_Everything in his life was a disaster waiting to happen, he concluded dully as the elevator arrived at Bill's floor with a heraldic ding, and he exited. He made his way down the hallway to the room Bill shared with Phil, relieved to see that the door was ajar in a fashion that normally indicated the boys were not only home and interested in receiving guests. _

_He raised his fist to knock on the partially open door but reflexively stilled his hand when he overheard Bill saying to Phil in a tone so wry Mike could practically hear the attendant sarcastic eye roll, "Well, _that _was a great pep talk Herb had with me after practice. He basically asked me if there was such thing as a quitter's effort to get back from an injury because if there isn't I should patent it immediately. Only, since it was Herb, he wasn't content to tell me that one time. No, he had to repeat it approximately fifty times, so I can only assume that he thinks I'm so dumb that the only thing I could ever invent is a quitter's effort." _

_A worried furrow wrinkled Mike's forehead. Since his mom, as she loved to remind him whenever he acted remotely rude, had taught him manners since he was too small to ride the carousel at the amusement park, he was well aware that he wasn't supposed to eavesdrop on conversations that he wasn't intended to overhear. Etiquette demanded that he either announce his presence with a knock on the door or not interrupt and walk away from the conversation, but his mind couldn't compel his body to do either of those things. _

_As much as his burning ears did not wish to listen to the vulnerable words spilling from his idol's mouth, Mike's hammering heart needed to hear them. If something was troubling Bill, he wanted to know about it so maybe he could try to help in his blundering way, and there wasn't even a one in a million chance that Bill would confide in Mike about anything that was bothering him. Patient and kind as he was, Bill still perceived Mike as the hyper little brother to tease and guide not share his troubles with, but Bill was essentially attached to Phil at the hip like Siamese twins, and there was no thought or feeling those two best friends didn't voice to one another. It followed logically, then, that if Mike wanted to have more insight into the pain Bill was experiencing during the comeback from his injury, he would have to eavesdrop on this conversation not because he was thirsty for a sip from the watering hole of gossip but because he was a concerned friend…_

"_Don't listen to the shit that spews out of Herb's warty ass." Phil managed to make the harsh words sound soothing. "He's the most cantankerous bastard this side of the Berlin Wall, and he probably takes considerable pride in that fearsome statistic. In the final analysis, I'm sure he's just afraid that you won't be back to top form for the Final Four, and fear makes his saccharine temper all the sweeter as you well know." _

"_I'm afraid, too, Phil," replied Bill so quietly that Mike almost convinced himself that he had misheard, since Bill—always unflinching in the face of any obstacle—could not possibly be intimidated by anything even a nuclear warhead. "With my leg like this, I can't—" _

_Here, Mike's finger dug furiously through the shell of his ear in an ultimately fruitless attempt to excavate the wax that had to causing him to hear phrases that would never emerge from Bill Baker's mouth. As large a vocabulary as Bill had, can't wasn't a part of it. _

"_Play my usual minutes, and I doubt that will change before the championships roll around," Bill went on, and the active fantasy life Mike's ear were developing likewise continued. "I'm supposed to be the captain of this team, and I'll basically be warming the bench during the most important part of the season." _

"_Sometimes generals have to lead their troops from the sidelines," responded Phil. "It doesn't matter where a leader stands as long as his heart is with his people, and everyone on this team understands that you're with us whether you can be on the ice or not, okay?" _

"_Yeah." Bill's sigh, which was audible even from where Mike was lurking in the hallway, made it plain that he was still more defeated than Mike could ever have imagined. "It's just that I don't know what to do about any of this. That's just so frustrating and discouraging."_

_At this, Mike couldn't stifle a gasp. Bill was supposed to know the answer to every question whether it was about college, hunting, hockey, or physics. It was as wrong for Bill to not know something as it was for gravity to start tugging objects upward. _

"_Jeez, the doorknobs in this dorm have amazingly large ears," remarked Bill, who had obviously been alerted to Mike's presence by the sharp intake of breath from the corridor. "Why don't you come in, Rammer, instead of standing there like a guard at Buckingham Palace?" _

_His cheeks flaming with embarrassment at being caught eavesdropping like a neighborhood vulture, Mike slipped into the dorm room, as Phil quipped, "Don't be ridiculous, Bill. The guards at Buckingham Palace are ordered to maintain an utterly impassive countenance no matter what gems they overhear, so this hapless scamp would probably be court-martialed within an hour." _

"_Well, that's a warm welcome." Sticking out his tongue at Phil, Mike tried to mask his humiliation with indignation. "Why are you such a nasty jerk to me all the time?" _

"_Sorry, was I being rude again?" Phil's eyes widened in feigned innocence. "Forgive me, Rammer. Do come in and wear your welcome out the way you always do." _

_Ignoring Phil's mockery, Mike turned to Bill, explaining, "I stopped by because I wanted to ask if you'd like me to pick you up a sandwich or something at Stub & Herb's." _

"_No, thank you. I'm not really hungry right now." Bill shot Mike an appraising glance. "There's something else you could do for me if you're willing, though." _

"_I'd do anything to help." His words exploding from him in a geyser, Mike leaned forward, eager to prove that he could do anything his hero requested of him. _

"_You should be careful who you make declarations like that to, Mike." Bill's lips quirked. "That's how people end up agreeing to commit murder in gang initiation rituals."_

"_You wouldn't ask me to do anything horrible like that." To show that his simple logic was utterly unassailable, Mike shrugged. "That's why I would do anything to help you, Bill." _

"_Touché." For a few seconds, Bill chuckled, and then his face took on a somber cast once again. "Promise me that if I can't play my usual minutes during our championship bid, you'll pick up the slack for me." _

"_Did your brain get hurt along with your leg?" Stunned, Mike's eyes expanded until they were the size of quarters. "I'm not even half the defenseman that you are. I can't replace you any more than a traffic cone can." _

"_You have to be able to do it." Locked on Mike's, Bill's gaze was firm. "That's why Herb brought you here: to be the leader of his defense." _

"_Oh." Mike crinkled his nose. "I thought it was so he could have someone to accuse of being a prima donna every day at practice." _

"_Nah." Bill flashed a smile. "That was just a bonus." _

"_I'll do my best to pick up the slack if the team needs me to do that." Mike ducked his head, thinking that he was just an exuberant kid whose desire to make big checks along the boards or charge up ice with the puck to score a goal was always taking him out of position to perform his defensive duties, as Herb constantly reminded him in the most barbed manner possible. "I can't be you, though." _

"_You don't have to be me; you have to be _you_." Bill paused to emphasize this point. "Just trust your instincts, and be yourself, because there's a reason that you were taken eleventh overall in the NHL draft, and it isn't that you suck at defense."_

"_Yep, the reason is the scouts have a higher opinion of my abilities than I do."Mike snorted. "Believe me, Bill, if there's any part of me that's ready to lead this team's defense, it must have come from trying to copy you." _

"_Copying me is pretty easy, scamp." Bill ruffled Mike's hair. "I just try not to let bad goals be scored while I'm on the ice. That's my grand strategy for success." _

"_Oh, and what do you do if that bad goal is scored?" pressed Mike, figuring that he would need this tidbit of advice when that inevitable bad goal was scored on his watch. _

"_Drown my sorrows in whiskey, update my will, and check that Phil still has my final farewell letter to pass along to my grieving family after Herb murders me." Bill's blue eyes twinkled. "What else could I possibly do under such dire circumstances, Rammer?" _

"_Don't tease, Bill." Mike scowled. "Come on. I'm being serious for once, and here you are messing with my mind." _

"_All right, I'll stop toying with your delicate psyche." Grinning, Bill patted Mike on the shoulder. "Being serious, if a bad goal is scored when I'm on the ice, I just remind myself that the next move I make is the most important one. That's what my high school coach used to say whenever someone wet the bed, and it was one of the handful of things he was right about, if you ask me." _

As he reached his destination and knocked on the ajar door, Mike was yanked out of his memories from last season.

"Come in!" called Bill's voice, and Mike slipped through the partially open door into the hotel room.

"How are you holding up?" Mike asked, his gaze riveting on the bucket with which Bill was icing his feet and ankles, while by the sound of water humming through the pipes and hitting tiles, Phil showered in jets that were probably chilly enough to make flesh pucker, bones ache, and muscles burn.

"Fine." Bill gave a ghost of a grin. "Don't worry, Rammer. The _U.S.S Bill Baker _hasn't sunken yet. In fact, it hasn't even sent out an SOS or released its lifeboats yet."

"That isn't too reassuring." Mike smirked, taking a seat on Phil's bed. "You're the sort of person who'd rearrange chairs on the deck of the _Titanic _after it struck the iceberg."

"If the ship's going down, it might as well look nice and organized while it does." Bill shrugged. "We wouldn't want the sea urchins to get an unfavorable impression of the wreck."

Clenching his fists so that his fingernails scratched into the tender heels of his hands because he couldn't bear to joke around as if everything was normal when to him it felt as if black had suddenly become white, Mike muttered, "It's nuts that you aren't all a bunch of shaking wrecks after the Herbies marathon. I mean, I didn't have to undergo the torture, and I still feel like a totally traumatized wreck."

"The Herbies did feel a bit like what would happen if an unstoppable force met an immovable object." Bill's feet shifted in the bucket of ice. "Still, it was most likely one of those events that are worse to witness than experience."

Highly doubting this last statement even if embracing it would bring him some comfort, Mike bit his lip so hard it bled, giving his saliva a metallic tang. "Herb's crazier than a rabid raccoon, but this is the cruelest thing I've ever seen him do. I just can't wrap my mind around why he decided to hit this new height of horribleness."

"Herb is a sort of mad artist who perceives this team as a mostly blank canvas on which he can create his magnum opus," explained Bill in a calm tone that suggested they were discussing nothing more emotional than tomorrow's predicted humidity levels. "Studying his potential masterpiece, he realized that he needed to add a sliver of shadow to bring out the shine in his picture, because you don't notice the light without the dab of darkness. Everything has a mixture of darkness and light, so the artist has to tinker with the balance of brightness and shadow until he gets it exactly right."

"My bullshit alarm is blaring." Mike's eyes crinkled in suspicion. "You don't have to lie to try to make me feel better, Bill."

"I'm not lying," answered Bill. "I'm just providing you with an education beyond the end of your hockey stick, because the Italians actually call that play of light and dark within a piece of art chiaroscuro."

Not about to attempt a pronunciation of this new vocabulary word that he would forget within an hour, Mike scoffed, "Well, if the Italians coined the term, it's definitely a steam mound of bullshit. Nobody can beat the Italians at shooting the bull. Even Rizzo admits that. Actually I think he takes pride in that."

Before Bill could reply, the door to the bathroom opened and Phil, wearing baggy a T-shirt and sweatpants as pajamas, emerged. Instantly detecting Mike's presence, Phil crossed over to his bed to deliver a firm shove to Mike's back, grumbling, "There's a turd on my bed. Now I have to flush it out, since it stinks."

"You don't stink at all; in fact, you smell delightfully like flowers." Offering an exaggerated sniff, Mike rose from Phil's bed. "Switching to that magnolia shampoo gives you such a manly scent. I'm green as a lizard with envy."

"Yep, and now I need my beauty sleep to maintain my status as a flawless specimen of masculinity." With a push, Phil propelled Mike toward the door. "Beat it, Rammer, before I have to muster the energy to beat you."

Unable to resist a retort as he exited, Mike tossed over his shoulder, "Beauty sleep isn't going to improve your looks any, Phil, because you'll still have your face shoved so far up your ass that no one will be able to distinguish the difference between the two."

Mike fully expected Phil to attempt to get in the last insult, so he was surprised when it was Bill who shouted out his name as he stepped over the threshold into the hallway.

"Yeah?" Cocking his head inquiringly, Mike pivoted to discover what his hero wanted from him.

"Mike, will you try to perk Neal up for me?" Bill asked. "When we left the arena, he looked so much like a whipped puppy left out too long in a downpour that I bet he needs a boost right now."

"I'll do what I can for him," promised Mike before setting off down the corridor toward his hotel room.

When he reached his destination, he plopped into the desk chair and scrutinized the room service menu, searching for the name of a dish that looked promisingly like a dessert, because sweets could always cheer Neal's spirit.

His eyes lit on the word krumkake, and, figuring that the second half of the dish bore a heartening resemblance to the term cake, he dialed the extension for the kitchen on the room phone and placed an order for it, hoping it was indeed a dessert and not a cake made from the pickled herring or poached cod with which the Norwegians were so obsessed.

As soon as Mike hung up the phone, the bathroom door swung open, and Neal and Dave came out, dribbling water all over the carpet. Wincing, Dave hobbled over to his bed and collapsed upon the mattress, declaring in a tone stale as flat soda, "I'm not going to move ever again. I'm staying right here until I croak, which will hopefully be soon, because I want nothing more than to be put out of my misery like a dog with cancer."

"Ouch!" whimpered Neal, as he fell onto the blankets that comprised his makeshift bed on the lumpy hotel couch. "Double ouch! Cripes, my whole body hurts whenever I move a muscle."

"You can take my bed, and I'll sleep on the sofa," Mike suggested, praying that his sympathy for Neal's plight was audible in his voice. "That might be more comfortable for you."

"You're so silly, Rammer." Neal's lips trembled in a peculiar blend of humor and pain. "This couch is too small for you. You'd have to sleep with your feet in the air, and all the blood would flow to your brain, so you'd probably end up getting a stroke or something."

"Well, if you're sure about sleeping on the sofa, we'll keep things as they are," responded Mike, not exactly apologetic about not having to spend the night on a couch that appeared to have more mountains than the Andes.

"I'm sure about sleeping on the sofa." Neal's fingers fiddled with a loose thread on one of his blankets. "What I don't understand is why Herb hurt us like this."

"Herb doesn't make sense." Mike shook his head, deciding against sharing Bill's chiaroscuro explanation since it contained too many shades of gray to bring any real consolation to someone like Neal who saw the world only in black and white. "The sooner we stop expecting him to act as if he has any human emotions whatsoever, the happier we'll be."

"That doesn't work for me, because I admire and trust him like a second dad, Rammer," burst out Neal. "I trusted him, and he hurt me, but I still respect him and believe in him. Isn't that sick? How messed up is it that I look up to someone who hurt me?"

"Not as messed up as the fact that somebody you admire and trust would hurt you." Mike's throat constricted like a cobra coiling around prey, and he was grateful when a sharp rap on the door provided him with an excuse not to have to choke out any more words on the grim subject.

After he had paid and tipped the maid who brought the krumkake, Mike set the tray of food on his nightstand and cut into it with the provided knife. To his relief, he sliced into it to see that it was definitely a dessert and a rather succulent one at that: a paper thin rolled cake filled with whipped cream.

"Who wants a piece of cake?" asked Mike, dumping a wedge of krumkake onto a porcelain saucer and sticking a fork in it.

"Will it spoil my luscious figure?" Neal wanted to know, a mischievous expression finally returning to his face after a long period of being absent without leave.

"It's loaded with cream." Mike chuckled as he thrust the platter into Neal's hands. "That means it will not only fatten you like a blimp, it will also leave you with ugly stretch marks."

"Don't sweat the weight gain, though, baby, because I'll still think you're the most beautiful creature on two legs that I ever met," teased Dave, blowing faux air kisses at Neal while Mike cut him a slice of krumkake.

As all three of them exploded in peals of laughter, Mike thought that he might be able to find it in his heart to forgive Herb, after all. Forgive. The frail beauty of the word took root in him, and he decided to hold onto that fragile seed of hope, remembering that in each of them was a balance of virtue and vice; light and shadow; art and agony; choice and regret; cruelty and compassion; humor and grief; ruthlessness and sacrifice. Each of them were their own chiaroscuro, their own bit of illusion battling to emerge from the shadows into something solid, something real. They had to forgive themselves and one another for that, because, in all of them, there was a lot of gray to work with, and no one could live in the light all the time.

All Mike could do now was laugh to release his pain and pleasure because he could, because he must, and because he wanted to see how long he could before his lungs made it so he had to stop.


End file.
